Soul of Goodness
by Objessions
Summary: AU - Mac is finally going after a real trail to find his dad and to bring down the Organization. Lots of h/c, whump, bromance, mystery, and drama.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N Hey, Mac Fans! Here's the sequel to Past Is Prologue. We are going on a mission to find Mac's dad and bring down the Organization. I'm never afraid of feedback or prompts and I love you all more than words can say. My first novel drops in days so this is my way of letting off steam so I haven't decided if it's going to be more action heavy or more full of whump or a bit of both. Feel free to nudge me. As usual, I am making this up as I go, and as always, I own nothing but my O/Cs and even they have a fair amount of what fits in cannon behind their inception. And now, back to our heroes …_

Mac snapped awake in the dark of the car and immediately started to try to rub away the headache that was thudding behind his forehead. He felt rather than saw Jack glance his way and decided to beat him to the conversational punch by asking, "Are we there yet?"

Jack snickered at the youthful sound of Mac's question, although he did so quietly, cognizant of the fact that a Bozer woken in the middle of the night would probably be chattier than he could tolerate. "I wish, bud. But we are about half-way there. We'll be comin' in to El Paso before too much longer. And then we are gettin' a room for the rest of the night and maybe some of tomorrow too. Jessie and the boys ain't goin' anywhere before we meet 'em in New Orleans."

Mac might have argued about taking a break, but he was beat, stressed, and his shoulder was currently a misery. He puffed out a long frustrated breath as he sat up further in his seat and ran his hands through his hair. Then he opened the glove box to fish out the Advil Jack always kept handy. "Getting out of the car sounds like a good plan," he offered, swallowing four pills with a sip from his tepid water bottle.

Jack glanced at him again, and although he was heartened that El Paso was showing up on the signs overhead now, he was more than a little concerned by Mac's posture and how he was stretching his neck and massaging his shoulder. "You okay, bud?" Jack asked, but gently, leaving it up to Mac whether or not he would reply. Mac shrugged, then immediately regretted it. "I'm guessin' that using Medical to bullshit a mission set up is not something you'll be inclined to do for future clandestine ops."

Mac managed a chuckle. "You'd be guessing right. I'm gonna bug Matty about changing the rules for medical staff on teams not being allowed to participate in clearance protocols. That would've made this so much easier. It's stupid to begin with; aren't agents supposed to most trust their team's medical staff? And if that wasn't a rule, Foster wouldn't have been so … so, goddamned thorough this morning." Jack chuckled, but it was tempered by the obvious pain his partner was in. Mac sniffed with irritation. "I feel worse right now than I did right after surgery."

Jack, who thought Foster had kind of a mean streak, did feel the need to keep Mac from being overly judgmental of that department based on a bad relationship with one staff member. "You have kind of a rep down there, Mac. Maybe he was just being careful."

Mac's eyes flashed. "Since when do I ever go into Medical saying I'm hurt and asking for more intervention? He could've just refused to sign off on the release and ordered an MRI or something, but no, that would've been easy. He wasn't being careful, he was being an asshole. Doctors are sadists." Then he thought of Rodgers with the brotherly affection of a trusted teammate even if he was also a doctor (a feeling once exclusively reserved for their buddy Punchy, the only medical type Mac had met since Bozer's mom that he'd ever trusted or liked), wishing he'd been able to see him this morning instead. "Most of them. Steve's okay."

Jack gave him another sideways look. "Yeah, Steve told me you'd probably be pretty miserable this afternoon. He says Foster takes his job a little too seriously. Doesn't seem to understand he's working with professionals. Shit, Steve said even Mel felt a little bad for you and as far as head nurses go, she's exceptionally unsympathetic … and that's saying something."

Mac laughed a little. Joke around the office with the other field agents was Mel was a nurse because she'd been too mean to be a dominatrix. She knew they said it too and she seemed to take it to heart. As a compliment. "Ah, I'm alright. Nothing a couple of drinks … or watching you bust Foster in the face won't fix."

They both cracked up then, pulling up a picture of the past. Both men had their own issues with medical intervention, and neither of them ever talked much about why, but Jack's own slightly less than rational response was almost exclusively about needles (only Mac knew the reason) and once, a couple of years ago, when Foster had been setting Jack's dislocated shoulder, he'd jabbed the man with pain meds without warning and Jack had reflexively loosened his front teeth, not to mention cracked the bridge of his nose. When Jack was injured, Foster always seemed to be elsewhere these days. "Well, he heads for the hills whenever I walk through the door, but I'll see what I can do," Jack continued to chuckle. Then he tapered off. "You're okay though, for real?"

Mac nodded, concealing his sigh of relief as Jack took the next exit. "Yeah, just sore. I still had rehab coming my way even with field clearance."

Jack gave him a knowing smile as he pulled into the motel parking lot. "I'm glad your shoulder isn't too bad, but I kinda meant more generally."

Mac smiled at him as Jack put the car in park and Bozer started to snort himself awake in the backseat. Honesty was the only policy at this point. "Nah, man. I'm leagues away from okay, in the more general sense, but we're getting me closer by the mile."

Jack nodded knowingly, opening his door, determined to shoulder all their bags so Mac wouldn't feel obligated. Mac gave him a grateful smile and Bozer just leaned blearily against the car, still not a hundred percent sure why Mac wanted him along on the mission to find his father and bring him in, but prepared (after a decent non-car related night's sleep) to bring his A-game in make-up and effects when it was needed.

It didn't surprise any of them that they'd been in the room less than an hour when they all fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Mac sat bolt upright in the darkness, panicking just a little until his brain oriented itself and he remembered he was in a motel room in El Paso with Jack and Bozer. He kicked off the blanket one of the other guys must've covered him with and swung his legs off the edge of the couch. He was glad he'd convinced them that he slept better on a couch because he could wedge himself into place and not roll over on his shoulder, which, he had told them, sort of hurt like hell by the time they stopped here for the night. At least he'd been able to say something honest. That he slept better anywhere was a blatant lie, but the couch was separated from the sleeping area with its two beds by a three-quarter dividing wall and offered a decent feeling of privacy. He tapped the touch-lamp next on the end table for its lowest setting and a very dim pink light was added to the illumination from the fluorescent signs outside filtering in through the standard issue gossamer motel curtains. Once the light was on, his breathing started to level out. The nightmares had gotten bad enough lately that when he was home he always just left the light in his bedroom, but here, with Jack and Bozer, he really didn't want to have the conversation, so he'd just turned off the lights and hoped for the best.

He checked the clock on the cable box. Just after two. That was too damned early to be up by anybody's metric, but he could tell from the post-workout pace of his heart and the buzzing in his head that he was up for the day. _Great_. He sighed and decided to do the exercises Steve gave him to help get his shoulder back up to snuff. He got through about half of them when he gave up and went to the little kitchenette for a water and some ibuprofen. All that poking and prodding by the doc yesterday had left him feeling bruised and swollen. If he couldn't have his own medic, he would have preferred Dr. Andrews, who at least seemed to take his patients' preferences and personalities into account. Foster, Mac thought to himself, seemed to think the agents at Phoenix were involved in some kind of vast conspiracy to make him look bad or something and was constantly on the offensive. He probably shouldn't be bitching though, even to himself, since he'd gotten exactly what he wanted, which was a refusal to clear him that went right into Phoenix's computer system and had been reinforced by Foster's email to Matty about Mac's ' _attitude problem_ '. If anyone at Phoenix was caught up with the Organization (a possibility he and Matty had discussed at length and that was reinforced by both Jack and Patricia) it would appear Mac was down for the count and was taking some much needed, and administratively enforced, R and R.

He heard Jack snore and roll over on the other side of the wall and shook his head with a grin. Jack was a real soldier's soldier. The man could sleep anywhere and be as functional on fifteen stolen minutes in a booth at a honky-tonk bar as he could on a solid fifteen hours of peace and quiet in the world's most comfortable bed. Then Mac heard a soft mumble and he felt himself become slightly more alert. Jack was pretty level about his combat experiences, military and otherwise, but Mac knew he frequently dreamt badly and had been prone to night terrors and flashbacks just like his younger partner. If Jack was going to have a bad night, he wouldn't want to wake Bozer and feel like he had to explain himself. Mac had gotten Boze to a place where he no longer sought explanation when Mac had a rough night. His friend would just turn on the light for him once he was free from the tendrils of the dream, ask if he was okay, and get him a water from the fridge. When Mac struggled it nearly always went along with an almost pathological thirst that he was certain came from the times he'd been denied water. Jack was more likely to get loud and wake up violently. That still bothered Bozer a lot more than Mac's occasional, easy to settle, outburst. Another slightly louder murmur came from Jack. Mac shifted, wondering if he should intervene. Mac's own dreams hadn't been about the War. They'd been about … No. He was awake now, and he was fine, and he wasn't going to start torturing himself with that. Sissy had suggested medication to both of them at one time or another, more than once, but given their jobs neither of them had much interest in anything that affected how awake they might be at any given moment even if it did help with PTSD induced dreams. They talked about it a few times with a gallows humor they both agreed only other service members would understand and not judge. A louder, more obviously distressed sound came from Jack. Mac got to his feet and padded softly into the sleeping area. Bozer was already awake, eyes wide, about to get up and do … well, he didn't know, but he knew when one of his friends was going through something that demanded action. Mac nodded at him with an affectionate smile and put his hands against his face, closed his eyes, and tilted his head, miming sleep and Bozer quickly complied. Mac didn't want to put Jack on the spot about his dreams and he had half an idea that he thought might be good for both of them, even if it wasn't easy. Mac sat down on the edge of Jack's bed carefully, well out of range of a devastating Dalton haymaker or head-but, which were legitimate dangers when waking a trauma-dream-having Jack. He put a hand carefully on Jack's leg and shook him just a little.

"Jack," he whispered. "Jack!"

Jack snapped awake, rolling onto his back, sitting up, and pulling his knees up in one lightning quick motion. He looked around for less than a second before his eyes settled on the blond sitting next to him. Already brushing off his own dreams, since Mac had woken him before he was truly caught in anything too terrible, he asked with concern, "Mac, what's the matter?"

"I woke up … I can't go back to sleep." Suddenly what had started as a plan to wake Jack up from a nightmare without the man feeling bad about it transformed into a desperate need for an understanding ear. "I was dreaming about … I … My dad … I'm sorry to wake you …"

Jack, grateful to have been roused from a terrible dream where Murdoc motioning for MacGyver to come over to where he was about to be carted away in an ambulance ended very differently, could see tears swimming in his friend's eyes even in the dim light the partial wall let in from the living area, just asked, "Do you want to talk, bud?'

Mac nodded, surprised that he really meant it. "Yeah, I do."


	3. Chapter 3

Bozer's eyes widened for perhaps the thousandth time in the last hour. "Hey, uh, Mac … why don't you pull into that rest stop with the big donut sign?"

Mac carelessly wove between a huge truck and a tiny car and Bozer felt his eyes go wide again. "Don't tell me you're hungry after the massive breakfast." He glanced in the mirror at Jack passed out in the backseat. And no wonder. Jack had been up so early with Mac and then had taken them to a little hole in the wall place he found out about from the desk clerk that served steak and barbeque twenty-four seven and had basically eaten his weight in cow. "We'll be in Fort Stockton for a late lunch easily."

"No, man, I'm the total opposite of hungry right now. Like I may lose that amazing steak Jack bought me."

Mac threw him a concerned glance. "What's the matter, Boze?"

Bozer really didn't want to answer with the truth so he tried a slight fib. "Maybe I'm sick with worry. You look like your shoulder is bothering you from driving."

"Nah, man, I'm fine," Mac said casually. He wasn't precisely fine, but good enough, he thought.

"Why don't we stop and I'll take over so it doesn't start to bother you?"

Mac shook his head. Boze was obviously not going to let up. He hit the blinker and began to cross the highway for the turn to the big donut shop. "I guess … If you really want to …"

"Mac! Watch the road! I'm getting greyer than Jack here!"

"Hey now," came the drawl from the back seat. "You leave my hair outta whatever you two are bickerin' about up there." He stretched and yawned, his face splitting into a grin when he saw Bozer's shoulders sag with relief as they pulled into a parking spot. He chuckled. "Had enough of your life flashin' before your eyes, man?"

Mac looked completely betrayed as he took the keys out of the ignition. "I am not a bad driver! I have never, I repeat never, had a non-work related car accident in my life. Neither of you can say that."

"Mac, you know I love you, but when you're distracted behind the wheel it's like being chauffeured around by a ferret on a double espresso," Bozer said half-apologetically.

Jack was laughing pretty hard as he got out of the SUV. "Ferret … Espresso … Ah, Boze that's my favorite thing you've ever said. For real, man."

Bozer climbed out snickering a little himself and throwing Mac slightly guilty glances. Mac huffed with irritation as he got out as well and chucked the keys over the roof to Bozer with a little more force than he intended, but Bozer caught them easily, prepared for Mac to be a little mad at him. Jack immediately took the keys. "Let the grown-up drive, children. Then there's no fighting and we all make it to San Antonio alive. And somebody can buy me a pitcher of margaritas for my trouble."

Mac finally cracked a smile as he leaned against the side of the SUV. He caught Bozer eyeing the donut shop. "Go get some if you want. I'm a spy not a judge," he teased by way of apology for getting so easily irritated.

Bozer gave them both a sheepish grin. "You guys want anything?"

Mac shook his head, then he reconsidered, "A coffee?"

Bozer nodded. "Jack?"

"Hell yeah, buddy. Coffee and two of whatever the house specialty is. This is my home turf and apart from all the other good stuff Texas produces, like Daltons, the food is always amazing."

"You want to come in?" Bozer's eyebrows went up, and he looked almost like he was hoping Jack would join him. Travel was not something Bozer had really learned to enjoy just yet.

Jack's eyes flicked to Mac for a second. "Nah, man. I'll just stay here and stretch my legs a little."

Mac recognized the knowing almost conspiratorial nod Bozer gave Jack and shook his head as Bozer disappeared inside. Jack leaned up against the vehicle next to him. Mac gave him an elaborate frown. "I'm a perfectly good driver."

Jack grinned. "You sure are, bud. When you're not exhausted from bein' up half the night and worried about … everything. But you're both of those things right now."

That was fair. So Mac nodded with a sigh and a slight smile. "Yeah, I guess I have to admit that much."

"So," Jack began, looking off up the highway like he was just thinking about their trip rather than giving them both mental space. "Had I gotten all the way to shouting when you woke me up or was I still just talkin' to myself."

Mac glanced his way. So Jack knew what he was doing last night … this morning … it was all running together these days anyway. "Just talking." He paused, trying to decide if he wanted to say more, then knowing he needed to get it off his chest. "I appreciate you getting up to talk to me. I didn't realize how badly I needed company until I opened my mouth to let you off the hook."

"Anytime, brother. Besides, this morning I owed you for a rescue. That was one of the worst dreams I've started in a while. If it had played all the way out, I'd probably still be holed up under the bed back in that motel with you poor bastards trying to bribe me out with pancakes or somethin'."

"Pancakes usually work." Mac bumped Jack's shoulder with his own in a gesture of affection and understanding so natural to both of them they hardly ever realized they did it. Then he took a long slow breath. "I appreciate you listening to me unloading about my parents. I didn't want to talk about my dream … But … I was reliving the day my mom died and the phone rang and instead of Gramps getting it, like I told you about this morning, I got it and I told my dad what happened. He started screaming about it being my fault …"

"Mac, buddy," Jack put a hand on his shoulder and Mac turned his head so Jack could see he wasn't on the verge of tears or anything. In fact it had been telling Jack the actual events of that day that had put his dream into perspective for him. Still Jack needed to hear him say so. "You know it wasn't now, right?"

"Thanks mostly to you … and probably some thanks to Sissy, too. I think I finally really do." He paused for a second but he could see Bozer in line for the cash register and he wanted to get this out before Boze came back. "I wish I could be more focused on what my dad could mean for our investigation into the Organization … but right now, an awful big part of me is caught up in my own shit."

Jack patted him again. "You're still gettin' the job done, kid. You let me worry about Phoenix's stuff and you worry about what you need."

Mac bumped into his shoulder again. "What I need right now is to look him in the eye and hear that he didn't leave because he blamed me." This time Mac heard a little quaver in his voice that he was determined to squelch since Bozer was currently walking back toward them with a drink carrier and an extremely large bag with a big grin on his face. Mac's voice hardened a little and the steel Jack heard there both heartened him and made him feel a little proud. "And if he doesn't say it, I might decide he has a punch-face. Jack Dalton style."

Jack chuckled and patted him on the shoulder again, climbing into the driver's seat. "You leave the face punching to good ole Jack. You almost busted your hand last time."

Mac smiled slightly. "And you already kind of want to punch him."

"Kinda? You are nothing if not understated, bud."

Bozer joined them then and the big greasy paper bag smelled something like heaven and Jack's hand was out the window to take it so he got dibs. Mac decided to let Bozer choose his seat. Bozer shook his head and climbed in back, letting Mac have the front passenger seat.

"I've seen enough over the dash this morning to last me a while, Mac." Mac could picture the sheepish look on Bozer's face when he heard him say, "Sorry about the ferret thing though."

"Ferrets are smart, and cute, and good at getting out of impossible situations and places. I think it was perfect, Bozer." Jack grinned and tipped Mac a wink.

Mac knew better than to point out all the things wrong with the analogy, including that hyperactive animals, including humans, tend to be calmer after they've had caffeine. And on that note, he took his coffee and then, on further reflection, took a warm donut because they smelled amazing. He took a bite and was not disappointed.


	4. Chapter 4

Mac picked his way around the small upstairs apartment just off Press Street near the industrial canal, turning over ashtrays, opening drawers, and avoiding the company of the other investigators also roaming around the residence that Jack and Jessie had settled on as the place to start since New Orleans wasn't all that far from the Colton's home and Frank had discovered had a tenant fairly recently. Billy, probably the closest thing to a pro in the Colton family in terms of crime scene protocol, was working with Jack to take prints in the bedroom. Jessie and Frank were talking to the neighbors, and Bozer … well, Boze was kind of going around behind Mac, not quite hovering ... but pretty close.

 _I know you're expecting me to yell at Bozer for following me like a babysitter … and normally that would be my first impulse. But … I have a confession to make. I didn't really ask Bozer along because I thought we might need his disguise or theatrical skills on this operation. I invited him because he was there when my family fell apart, because he knew my dad and grandfather, because he knew me and why I moved in with him and his folks. I asked him along because I know I need someone with me who knew me as well when all this really started as Jack knows me now. He's driving me a little crazy at the moment, but I just have a feeling I'll be glad I brought him along. I know, I know; Mac, feelings aren't really your strong suit. You're right. That's why Jack and Bozer are my best friends; they understand that and fill in the blanks. They also know when I'm feeling something but not letting myself … feel it? You know what, I'm just going to focus on the evidence._

"You alright, Mac?" Bozer asked tentatively.

"I … uh, yeah, Boze, there's nothing really here. Somebody cleared out of here more than two weeks ago from the state of the food in the fridge."

Mac paused. He didn't say what both of them knew – that fried chicken and take-out mashed potatoes had been one of Mac's dad's favorite Sunday indulgences and there was a mighty quantity of it gone moldy on the second shelf, that Dr. Pepper had been his father's favorite soda of which there was a twenty-four pack, that he had a weakness for Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake when he was stressed and a half-eaten one was sitting right next to the take-out bird. Bozer didn't get very far away, but was trying to give Mac some space. Bozer saw Jack and Billy talking very earnestly over by the television now and could hear the sounds of The Big Easy waking up for the night; police sirens and jazz, gunshots and joyful shouts, the musical cacophony of a city that was many things, but that was most of all both neglected and cherished.

He smiled to himself. He'd always wanted to come here. He had been thinking that he'd like to reboot _Interview with a Vampire_ someday and really do it justice, right here where the story was born. He had already started casting the whole thing in his head. He liked Finn Jones to play Louis, but he wanted a real knock-out to be Lestat this time … not someone the director had a fan boy crush on like Tom Cruise, but a devastating blond with penetrating yet vulnerable eyes. He snorted to himself when he pictured telling Mac the time had come to star in one of his flicks as something other than a CGI monster or under layers of latex; although he'd been telling his friend for years he had a face for the movies – hell even his army buddies had known it, calling him Hollywood – and he should definitely get a superhero movie all his own. Bozer was lost in a pleasant fantasy about convincing Mac to be his franchise vampire when Mac opened the door to the tiny bathroom off the living area and Bozer saw him almost stumble, his hand catching the frame of the door like he was trying to prevent a fall.

Bozer rushed over, getting closer than he really intended, but afraid Mac was about to go down like a sack of potatoes. "Mac!"

MacGyver turned and held up a hand. He might not have noticed it was shaking, but Bozer sure as hell did. On the vanity was a razor, menthol shaving cream, and an open container of cologne. While it was mostly evaporated, it still released its smell permeating the whole tiny bathroom right down to the cheap synthetic shower curtain that hung close by in all its Pepto-Bismol pink glory. _English Leather_. It was a smell so unmistakable, so familiar, that Bozer had a second where he kind of wanted to sway too. Mac's mom had loved the stuff. And when they were kids, Mac's dad would complain about it, saying he didn't need perfume. But once she'd gotten sick, he always worse it. To the point where even Bozer, who'd only become really close with Mac after busting Donny's nose up and stepping in to protect his quiet, non-violent friend, associated the smell with Mr. MacGyver. Mac never wore cologne and Bozer thought he understood why. Instead of backing off like Mac was clearly indicating he should do, Bozer stepped closer. "Mac?"

Instead of pulling away, Mac just shook his head and nudged Bozer out of the way so he could step out of the small room and pull the door closed behind him, blocking out the smells. He moved toward the kitchen where Jack and Billy were now lifting prints off the dishes that had been abandoned in the sink. When he got there, he leaned against the island, putting it between himself and the others, closing his eyes for a second, just letting the memories wash over him. Bozer stood quietly next to him. After a minute he ventured, "He musta been here, huh?"

Mac nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Bic disposables carefully washed and dried with the cover put back on, Barbasol menthol shaving cream, English Leather? If it wasn't him it was his clone."

Jack looked up and saw his face then. He stepped around the island and put a hand on his shoulder, not for one second missing how Mac nearly flinched away. Jack had known it had been bothering him more than he'd admit to, even before Dr. Foster had manhandled him back at Phoenix. He briefly considered texting Steve about it, but decided it could wait. "Find something, didja, bud?"

"He was here Jack. Not just some guy using a name that coincidentally rang a bell. My father was here. And he cut and run." Mac was pleased that the bitterness he felt didn't find its way into his voice as he tipped his chin at the dishes in the sink. There were only a few and they'd been rinsed, but they hadn't made it all the way to washed. "The toiletries in the bathroom are all things I remember him using."

Bozer chimed in. "Even I remember his cologne. Mac's mom loved it and he used to bathe in the stuff. I remember the smell from when he'd drop Mac off in kindergarten."

Jack nodded thoughtfully. He and Billy pulled some good partial prints. If Boze and Mac were right, confirming it shouldn't be too hard. In fact, there was a slice of cheesecake in the fridge with a bite taken right out of it. If they needed to, they could probably get DNA. And even if James MacGyver wasn't in the database, Mac was and they could establish a filial relationship with the tenant with no problem at all. "Well," he put a reassuring hand on Mac's shoulder and gave him a smile. "We know we were on the right track then, brother! You had a hell of a good plan. Let's call in the collection team Matty has arranged for us locally to really comb the place now that you're pretty sure …"

"I'm completely sure, Jack," Mac interrupted quietly.

"Yeah, yeah, now that you're sure," he placated. "And then we can …" His phone started ringing then. "Lemme step outside to get this. The signal's better on the porch. It's Phoenix so maybe Riles found something with the partials we sent her."

Jack stepped outside and Mac heard his voice raise through the closed door that was, for a troubled neighborhood, interestingly made mostly of glass. He and Bozer had started helping Billy bag a few items that he wanted their teams to look at together when Jack burst back through the door holding his phone aloft. Mac could see Matty's face up close in video-call mode. Jack prefaced her announcement by saying, "Houston, we have a problem."

Mac looked at Matty intently. "What's wrong?"

Jack flinched before she even answered, looking at Mac with genuine concern. "Murdoc has escaped our secure facility."

Mac's jaw dropped for a moment in a combination of anger and anxiety. Then reason reasserted itself. "But he was in a medically induced coma!"

Matty nodded. Mac noticed that Jack looked rather pale. "He was supposed to be. That didn't stop him from sitting up, removing his ventilator, choking a guard, stealing his weapon, and waltzing off the floor. We have footage until he reached the security desk when the cameras were cut off. There are no surviving staff to question about what happened next."

Mac wasn't sure how he got to the floor, only that the next thing he remembered was sitting on it, being brought a bottle of water as Jack peered into his face with intense worry.


	5. Chapter 5

"So," Jack began, "are we going back in to Phoenix in the morning?"

Mac only half heard him, in fact only knew that Jack had said something, not the content of what he said, and assumed that he must be talking to Bozer. Mac was caught up in watching the surveillance video for perhaps the hundredth time.

"Mac!" Jack tried again a little louder.

He glanced up from the laptop that was balanced on his knees. "What?"

"I said are we going in?"

Mac frowned, "Why would we?"

Jack actually frowned in return. "Because Murdoc threatened you and your dad. And because you are very close to this and you haven't actually slept since LA."

Instead of denying it, Mac just shrugged. "We worked too damned hard to get off the books on this one. I'm not going in just because something unexpected cropped up. Besides, we're moving off the radar now so the Organization has literally no way to track us. If anything I'm worried about Riley and the rest of Todd's team moving through official channels."

Mac frowned.

"What's up, brother?"

Mac got up and put the laptop on the table so Jack and Bozer could both see it. "Watch this part."

Mac played, rewound, and played again a short segment of video in which Murdoc choked out a guard, glanced up at the camera with a satisfied smile, and then pushed a set of double doors both open before breezing through them toward the security desk.

"So Murdoc's still creepy as hell … We already knew that, Mac," Bozer said, shaking his head and giving a dramatic shudder.

"Wait," Jack was frowning now too. He reached out and wound it back and replayed the video again. "He's moving like he's not injured. He shouldn't even be able to use that arm based on where I got him. Shit like that don't just heal. And here he is, so strong that it didn't even look like work when he … Bastard didn't even break a sweat."

Mac nodded. A memory of Murdoc's shadow passing in front of the light at the top of the Washington Monument while he had clung to the ladder flashed through Mac's head and then he had a brief moment where he pictured the story that had made him think of, a thin rope fraying, separating. He had the momentary unpleasant sensation of falling. Before he could stop himself, he quietly murmured, "It's like he's not even human. Like he's a monster."

Bozer had never heard Mac say anything like that before and he instinctively just put an arm around his friend's shoulders. "Or like he has CIPA," Bozer offered matter-of-factly.

"Like he has what now?" Jack asked looking at Mac, but Mac just shrugged and turned to Bozer.

"Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis," Bozer rattled off. "It's an autonomic nervous system disorder that makes the sufferer unable to feel pain, sometimes unable to feel anything, and a lot of people who have it also don't sweat."

Jack nodded and grinned at him. "That makes all kinds of sense; how he never looks rattled, how he just gets up and runs off after shit that would've had anybody else unconscious from pain … You been hanging around Steve reading his boring medical journals or something, Boze?"

Bozer gave Jack a sheepish grin as he noticed Mac getting out his phone as he headed onto the patio of their latest motel room. "Nah, man. I love _House_. I mean, I watch it when Mac's not around because he hates that stuff, but I binge it on Netflix every time you guys are gone on a mission."

"If it breaks the case I owe you case of whatever the hell you want, Boze."

"Nah, man. If it breaks the case and gets that psycho off all our backs, then that's plenty of payment. One less thing for Mac to worry about right now, you know?"

"Still man, it's a pretty cool idea … Deserves at least a really expensive bottle of something. If it pans out I'm gonna empty my wallet to say thank you for the reason you just mentioned."

Bozer grinned. "I'm a cheap date Jack. Buy a couple of pounds of that bacon you got from back in Texas the last time you went home and I'll even make the waffles to go with it to celebrate."

"Deal," Jack nodded.

He fist bumped Bozer as he headed to follow Mac outside, wondering what his partner was up to, and glad that Mac had included Bozer in his plan. Because Jack wasn't about to sit around and watch _House_ either and who the hell else knew stuff like that? As he opened the patio door he heard Riley's voice on Mac's speaker, "Yeah, it's really rare. Like so rare that it's prevalence is listed as unknown by the NIH."

"So, if we were to dig into advocacy organization, medical records, that kind of thing …"

"We might be able to find out who Murdoc really is, yeah. And if we know that, we might be able to track down how and where the Organization recruited him, which could lead to a break in tracking them down, too."

"Could you ..?"

"Already on it, Mac. And I'll loop Matty in. Save you the call to the office."

"Thanks, Ri. And like I said before …"

"We'll be careful, Mac. You, too. Okay?"

"You bet."

He ended the call and turned to Jack, with a spark of hope lighting his eyes. Jack asked, "So it's a good lead?"

Mac nodded with a half smile. "Could be. For once I'm grateful for Bozer's obsession with medical dramas." Mac sighed. "I sort of hope he's right just because it would explain some of the weirdness. I don't like things I can't explain."

Jack patted him on the shoulder, careful this time that his reassurance was deposited on Mac's right side, since the kid was obviously hurting again. "I know ya don't, bud. I'm not a real big fan of things you can't explain either."

Now that they'd had a breath of air and had made what might be progress on at least one aspect of their mission, they silently agreed to head back inside and give the Coltons a call from the motel's in-room phone. They had decided that they should probably keep communication with the Coltons off official Phoenix devices. After a brief conversation with Frank, Jack explained to Mac and Bozer that Jessie was tracking down a lead to a regional property management company that had been handling the bills for a number of residences with Henry Jackson associated with them in one way or another. She should have something later in the evening, Frank said. With nothing they could presently do until they had more information from one source or another, the guys were deciding what to do about dinner and Jack and Bozer were gearing up to argue about whether to hit of the place with the famous shrimp po boys (Jack's preference) or crawfish etouffee (which was what Bozer really wanted) . Mac was about to chime in that he didn't care where they went as long as there was something other than seafood when his phone rang with a video call. It was Steve. Worried that something might have happened to the team, Mac answered immediately.

"Is everyone okay?" was out of his mouth before the picture even caught up with the fact that he'd answered.

Steve nodded and gave him a grin. "Everybody's fine, man. And we're all on high alert, just in case." He could see Bozer and Jack just over Mac's shoulders so he added, "Interesting idea about Murdoc, Boze. Wish I'd thought of it."

Bozer grinned, but brushed off the compliment. "You were too busy doing real field work, dude. I got plenty of time to watch TV and remember stuff like that while you're out there keeping my boys here from getting themselves killed."

"Speaking of," Steve said, his gaze returning to Mac's face. "I just read Foster's notes. It sounds like your shoulder was a hell of a lot worse than I thought. He recommended you have a surgical consult with a specialist and wants Matty to make it mandatory."

Mac grinned and shook his head. "Guess I played him better than I thought. Good thing you and Matty both know it was an act," he added a little forcefully.

Steve frowned at him. "How is it really though?"

Mac shrugged, a gesture chosen to purposely show how mobile his shoulder was at that moment. "Fine. Good. Practically back to normal even."

Steve took in the skeptical side eye Jack was giving his partner and concealed a chuckle. "Okay, Mac. Sure."

Mac frowned, feeling the first wisps of irritation. "That's not why you called is it? It better not be because …"

"No, so chill out. Jeez." Steve shook his head. "Defensive much?" Mac just flashed him a sheepish expression. "I'm calling because Milton's busy and so is Ri, obviously, and we wanted to give you an update."

"Go on."

"So it looks like some of these residences that are tied to your father's known aliases have been used recently. And the one we just came to check out was active as recently as this morning when the landlady saw the man who's been staying there leave."

"Okay," Mac said, making the word a prompting sort of question.

"This place has security cameras. Riley was able to get us the footage." He paused. He wasn't sure if Mac was going to think this was good news or bad news. "It was definitely not your father."

"Oh," was all Mac said. But he frowned. Why would they call him to tell him that? They expected the known aliases to be a bust.

Steve cleared his throat. "Thing is, we just finished going through the place and Todd found a folder with … with all your information in it, Mac. Recent pictures and everything. It looks like another Organization hit order."

"Oh," he said again. "I guess that's not all that surprising."

Steve nodded. "We just wanted you to know. We're setting up to nab the guy, if he comes back tonight."

"Okay."

Jack was expecting Mac to ask questions, offer well wishes, something, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Mac had gotten a little bit quiet. Jack butted in on the conversation. "Sounds good, Steve. We're kind of a bust where we are too." Jack paused. "We'll be in touch if we tumble to anything useful. You do the same, ya hear?"

"You bet." Steve nodded again. The motel room phone started ringing. "Watch your six, guys."

They ended the call just as Bozer was answering their in-room phone. They looked at him expectantly. He looked mildly put out as he hung up the phone. "That was Jessie. She thinks she has something and wants to meet us up in Biloxi ASAP. She said that's like a two hour drive, maybe a little more with traffic."

Mac was already going to grab his bag and Jack did the same, asking, "You got a problem with Mississippi, Bozer?"

"Nah, man, but I wanted dinner and sleep and then beignets and New Orleans coffee for breakfast," he whined.

Mac took the car keys from Jack. "I have the perfect solution. You can get beignets and coffee for the road. You guys can grab a nap. And I'll drive."

Jack took the keys back. "We already talked about how you get when you're tired and distracted and I can hear the accident you'd get us into crashing back from the future."

Mac managed a chuckle. That was probably accurate at the moment. "But coffee?"

"Yes!" Jack and Bozer answered at once. Then Jack added, "And beignets for now. But after we check in with Jessie we are gettin' some dinner at Mary Mahoney's. You remember the last time we were ..?"

Mac grinned, "And here I thought I'd lost my appetite. I think I could find it for their bourbon pecan pie."

Jack couldn't decide if Mac was putting on the smile and enthusiasm for a good meal for his and Bozer's benefit, but in the face of all this new information, he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

The road to Biloxi revealed the typical Gulf Coast mix of the more traditional antebellum south and the struggle for modern economic viability. Jack and Bozer chatted a fair amount on, what had become for them already, the relatively short drive. Mac had been quiet, mostly staring out the window into summer's late dusk occasionally adjusting the A/C to deal with the oppressive humid heat. Jack glanced at him every once in a while but didn't try to engage him, other than suggesting that instead of freezing him and Bozer he might try ditching his leather jacket. Mac had just shrugged so Jack backed off. Mac's face when he had come out of the bathroom after smelling what he was sure was his father's cologne had been worrisome, at best. It had the look of physical injury, maybe a fairly serious one, although Mac had spoken with the quiet calm Jack was used to hearing in all but the most dire of circumstances.

Jessie and the boys had been helpful because they'd tracked down the general manager of the property management company that, if you looked hard enough, was tied to the properties within about a seven hundred and fifty mile radius that might be connected to Mac's father, or at least the alias Mac thought he was using (and which he felt the New Orleans apartment confirmed). The older gentleman had described the man that had been coming to him to pay for the arrangements in cash and Jack had shown him the most recent photograph they had of Mac's father. The man had squinted at it and said it might be the guy but he couldn't be sure because the man he was dealing with was probably in his early to mid-fifties and quite grey. Mac had looked more than a little defeated. His father had been a nice-looking guy, but was honestly quite non-descript with brown hair and brown eyes, average height and build, so ' _maybe_ ' wasn't really all that helpful. The manager said he didn't know if it helped, but Mr. Jackson walked with a fairly significant limp. Instead of questioning him more about that Mac had just shrugged. Bozer, on the other hand, had frowned and asked if the man had any paper and pencils handy.

In the very pre-twenty-first century office, Bozer had taken the photograph Jack brought and the printer paper and pencil and sat down at the manager's desk. In almost no time Bozer had drawn a conceptualization of what the photographed man might look like now. Granted it was only fifteen years or so, but as Jack pointed out, if you asked any middle aged guy out there, there was a big difference between thirty-five and fifty (which he could just recently officially attest to) and that could probably be said for Mac's old man too, since they were talking about the difference between thirty-seven and fifty-two. When Bozer finished the manager had said, "Well, yeah, that's the fella, I'd bet ma soul on it. And when people like me say that we mean it. The veil between the worlds is real thin in these parts so I know my soul is real enough to lose."

Instead of a derisive comment about the existence of a soul, or something reasonably scientific that Jack or Bozer would have expected, Mac had just thanked the man, accepted the folder of receipts for the cash payments that all had an identical sloppy signature that Mac had narrowed his eyes at for a moment along with a few notes about various properties in the same hand, and told the man to be more careful with his immortal soul, although in this case he and his partners could probably assure him it was safe. The older man smiled pleasantly and then he mentioned that the last payment had come by mail just a day or two ago, accompanied by a phone call with an apology for not meeting him in person and putting so much money in an unsecured envelope. Mac had asked the man if there was any way he still had the envelope and when it had been fished out of the trash and handed to Mac, the young man had simply nodded his thanks, put it in his jacket pocket, and wished the man a nice evening. Mac had led the way to the car and the team had spoken briefly with the Coltons outside. Mac thanked them for their help, but said he thought they wouldn't be in the area after tomorrow and he hated to ask them to move outside their usual zone of operation so if they wanted they could head home. Frank said, with genuine enthusiasm, that if the Phoenix guys ever needed their help out on the left coast the Colton family would be more than happy to take a road trip, and Mama had been asking after both of them, especially Mac, who she was certain needed feeding up a little. Mac had smiled, shaken hands, and extended an offer to the whole family, any time they wanted, to come visit LA and crash with him and Bozer since their house was much larger than they needed, even though Jack had all but moved in over the last couple of months. Jessie had made Jack blush by saying that she'd be more than happy to help save space by sharing a room and given Jack a pointed smoldering look. Then they'd parted ways and Mac had settled into the passenger seat without much further comment.

Jack drove to Mary Mahoney's where they just barely made their reserved table and despite Jack's worry about Mac's cool behavior during their interview with the property manager, it appeared that Mac ate a decent portion of the chicken marija, although it was a messy dish and difficult to tell if he was really eating or just moving things around on his plate. He did finish his bourbon pecan pie and the Irish coffee he'd ordered with it. Mac's appetite was easy to disrupt, but the man had a clear weakness for good pie and a hot toddy. _No wonder Mama Colton took a shine to him_ , Jack thought. The short drive to their hotel had been pleasant, with everyone commenting on the food and drink and Bozer expressing jealousy that their travels offered such opportunity to indulge and saying that maybe he was all wrong about not wanting to really go into the field.

They had booked a small but well-appointed suite at the local casino, not for the gambling but for the space and the relative anonymity the larger hotel offered. An exhausted, slightly tipsy, and grinning due to postprandial bliss, Bozer went immediately to bed. Jack and Mac sat in the little living area for a while, but the conversation was unusually strained, Mac unusually quiet. Jack tried to talk about their interview with the manager a few times with little success, then about the search of the New Orleans apartment with even less. After a short while Jack said good night and went to change for bed. The lights stayed on in the living area for a while and then went out. Jack could hear Mac move off to his room, saw the light go on under his door, then after a time go out. Jack lay in the dark for a long time. Then when he was relatively certain the other men were asleep, he got up and, determined not to disturb anyone else with his paranoia on Mac's behalf, tiptoed into the living area. Using just the light of his phone so as not to wake the other men, Jack went through the slips and notes the property management company guy had given them. He frowned and went through it again. _Hmmm_. He had just about decided to get up and look around for the missing piece when Mac came out of his room and gave a short sharp call of surprise.

"Jesus, Jack. You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing out here in the freaking dark?" It was asked lightly, but Mac's expression was suspicious, anything but light.

Jack forced a chuckle and a knowing look, hoping to drive the haunted look in Mac's eyes away for a second. "Lurking." Then he looked at him seriously, "You didn't put the envelope from the manager with the folder, Mac. Why?"

"I don't know, I wasn't thinking I guess."

"Wanna go get it and show it to me?" Jack asked levelly, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt.

"I," Mac began and looked away for a second, before turning back to Jack and almost glaring at him through eyes that were full of tears he clearly meant not to shed. "I was kind of hanging onto it for myself, until I've looked into it."

"Well, I'm here to help, brother. Why don'tcha let me take a look?"

Mac shook his head. "Nah, I got it. It's not a big deal." His expression was completely closed off suddenly.

Instantly worried about the cold look Mac was giving him in the dark living area, a look that reminded Jack of the night he'd thought he might be losing him in his own mind on the deck in LA after they'd returned from Chechnya, Jack wanted to figure out how to help. "Mac," Jack began. "What's the matter, man?"

"I just don't know who I can trust any more, Jack."

Jack's face was stricken. "You don't think you can trust me?"

"No … I … I don't mean …" Mac's breath hitched. He hated that this was even in his head, but betrayal after betrayal had made him wary, had hurt even is best memories of anyone. "It's just … Jack … you've always been there." Jack thought he knew what Mac might be thinking, but he stayed silent, just nodding for him to go on, his dark eyes soft and serious. "Everyone I've ever trusted with all my darkest secrets, Nikki, Thornton, hell even my grandfather, have all betrayed me, been part of something else …"

Jack held himself still, against all his finer impulses, since all he wanted to do was put a comforting arm around his friend when he saw the look in the young man's eyes. "What do you mean your grandfather?"

Mac shook his head. "I never told you why I went to live with Bozer and his family, really."

"No," Jack shook his head. "You did. You and Boze both said it was because he got cancer and he didn't want you livin' with that every day again."

Mac nodded, then shook his head. "Yeah … I mean that was the story … And he did get sick … You know that didn't kill him though. I caught him talking on the phone to my dad … telling him all about how I was still getting beaten up in school, how I'd hidden a bad knee injury from my skateboard from him, how he needed to come back because I needed real parents not some old man. We weren't ever as close after that. I mean he tried, but …"

"Tell me what I can do to fix whatever you're feeling tonight, bud," Jack said with almost desperate seriousness. Goddamn when he met this kid's father if the man walked away from whatever happened without needing his jaw wired shut, Jack was going to consider himself a complete failure as a human being, and definitely a failure as Mac's friend.

Mac's brow furrowed with something that looked like a perfect cross between anger and sadness, "Fixing me isn't your job."

"Mac, I'm your friend. You know I'd do anything for you because of that alone." Jack began, hoping to reassure his partner of his loyalties, "And apart from that, you know my job is to have your back, to help you."

"Who gave you that job?" Mac asked, his voice openly shaking now.

"What do you mean, Mac? I … I mean, Thornton put us on the same team, but I guess, me, because I asked when I left CIA permanently to go to DXS."

"Why did you want to be on the same team Jack?" Mac's voice was a strange combination of hard and near tears.

"Because I admired you! Ya dumbass! When my team got pulled out of Bagram to go after you I was expecting some green boot who didn't know his ass from his elbow, just like half the other kids we dragged out of holes all over the damned world. But I met the amazing Angus MacGyver. And I never met anyone else quite like you in all the times I worked with Delta or at CIA!"

"I've never been clear, what do you mean times you worked with ..?"

"Well, you know I was a Ranger, you know I went Delta, and you know the CIA recruited me. There's a lotta time between when I got started in the business of serving our great country and when I actually met you, bud."

"Yeah," Mac said carefully, already feeling a little better about what he'd been thinking but not wanting to be too hopeful either.

"I bounced back and forth a lot for years and years. I'd be working for CIA and then Delta would want me to come in and teach for a bit, maybe hire me on contract … I've told you this, damnit! I was on a short term contract when I met you!"

"Why?"

"I told you that, too!" Jack was starting to feel a little angry now. He'd been as open and honest with Mac as their jobs ever allowed. He understood the kid's reserve, but it didn't hurt any less. "My dad was sick, real sick. Died not long after you and I met, even though I tried, even though I hoped the money would help. Mission right after I went back to CIA, I was real excited about it, 'cause I was workin' with Sarah again, and Matty was in charge and I liked both of them. Trusted 'em … If it hadn't been for Sarah I wouldn't have gotten to say goodbye. Shit, she got me home, helped me sneak my ass out of the hospital to go …"

An almost amused eyebrow was raised. " _You_ snuck out of a hospital?"

"Well, I learned from the best didn't I, Houdini? Oh, I'm sorry, that was Hollywood. Your escape-based shenanigans make it hard to remember."

Mac shook his head, but he was almost smiling now. "So if you were still with CIA, how was it you came to me with the offer from DXS?"

Jack sighed. He felt a little bad for getting annoyed. Of course Mac was suspicious now. Well, that ought to be easy to fix. "I was involved in a joint taskforce, bud. I've told you that. Thornton was the agent in charge and when I asked for leave to go see you in the hospital over there she came to me with the transfer offer. DXS was new, they were recruiting … I just didn't think it was weird, I guess."

Mac nodded. "She was a boss, giving orders; I guess I get it."

Jack smiled at him gently. "She was some pissed when I told her you said no."

Jack got very quiet then, and blinked hard a couple of times.

"What's the matter?" Mac asked, worried.

"I've never told you this before … but … I suspected something then."

"You did?"

"Yeah, I mean, I know they were trying to build a base, but you were a kid." Mac's eyes flashed, but he knew Jack didn't mean it like that. Most agents had college degrees on top of military or other experience, and he was just a tech, and an injured, traumatized tech at that. "She kicked me off the taskforce. That's when I went undercover with Matty that last time and … Shit went sideways … on an epic scale. Both of us almost died, man."

Mac hadn't ever heard that much detail about Jack's own time in Chechnya. "Is that why she was so pissed off?" he asked, plainly curious.

"She thought I leaked something. But I didn't. I swear, Mac. I never leaked anything." He paused, frowning now. "But somebody did." Mac just nodded. "When I got out of the hospital that time, it was on Patty's signature with my agreement to transfer to DXS. She sent me to talk to you again." He took an almost shaking breath. "I was so grateful to not be under investigation for the leak, to not be up on charges, and to know you were stateside and okay, that I didn't even ask questions, just showed up on your doorstep to offer the job and keep you from going back to the Goat Farm. I asked her if I could work with you and she said of course. Maybe I shoulda looked that particular gift horse in the mouth … if I had you might not think that I …"

"I'm sorry, Jack." Mac paused and casually drew the back of his hand over his eyes, not acknowledging why for even a second. Then he turned to face Jack fully. "I trust you. With my life, man. I just had a bad moment. I … I don't even know what to say, just … I'm sorry," he said again.

Jack slid over on the couch and pulled his partner into a one-armed hug. "Don't apologize, Mac. You've been screwed over too many times to ever apologize for having trust issues. But I swear I'll never keep anything from you. And if I ever have by accident I'll try to fix it."

Uncharacteristically, Mac hugged him back, "I believe you, Jack." He thought for a minute and then reached over and turned on the light beside the little loveseat they were sitting on. "The envelope is in my jacket … The postmark is from our local office."

Jack froze for a second before pulling away and getting up to retrieve the envelope. "You mean in LA?"

Mac didn't have a chance to answer before Jack had the envelope out to squint at. Jack's response summed things up for Mac rather nicely. "That son of a bitch!"

"Turn it over. You're gonna like that even less," Mac said.

And while Jack had some trepidation about what was happening already, Mac's voice sounded normal to him again. He sounded like his brother again. That made him feel better, no matter what else was happening. He flipped the envelope. On the back was written almost too close to read a bunch of what, at first glance, appeared to be random words. On closer inspection, they were all chemical names and some numbers. "What the hell?" Jack asked no one in particular.

Mac answered immediately. "He must have known we were going to come looking. It's a message. From my father. For me."

"How the hell could you possibly know that?" Jack frowned.

"It's a code my dad taught me when I was little. We used to use it to plan surprises for my mom and stuff. She was so not a science nerd," Mac said with a soft smile.

"What's it say?" Jack asked, not a hundred percent sure he wanted to know.

"Come here," Mac offered. "I'll show you."


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N_

 _Hey guys, sorry I've been MIA for a couple of days. My book_ _Always Darkest_ _went live on my publisher's site yesterday and even though it usually takes a couple of weeks to clear Amazon's vetting process, it went live there, too, by noon, quite unexpectedly. It's been a crazy little ride so far. I'm going to have lots of work to do over the next few months to promote it (not to mention work on the sequel because we are a go for Book 2 - woooohoooo!). Super stressful, but the good kind of stress. Exciting makes-you-feel-alive stress! And I'm not going to abandon our guys! Writing here and talking with all of you is one of the highlights of my days. My last teaching day for the summer is tomorrow and then, professional writing and editing aside, my fics here should start to cook along again. I couldn't leave this one hanging where it was anymore though, so here's the next installment. I hope you enjoy!_

 _0-0-0_

Mac resisted the idea of calling Matty and telling her about the note at first, if only because the contents called into question which players Mac might be able to trust. Jack had opened his mouth to respond and then closed it quickly, thinking that he didn't want to make Mac question his loyalties again, even if it was only a little by defending Matty or anyone else at Phoenix. Bozer had stepped in before Mac caught the slightly hurt expression Jack was wearing and sensibly pointed out that the first person to betray Mac's trust had been the guy who left him that message and unless he wanted to go it alone (save for Jack and Bozer because they wouldn't leave him no matter what) he was going to have to decide to trust someone with some clout. Jack had agreed then, saying that if him winding up in Mac's life full time had been a set up through someone manipulating the events of either of their lives, Matty hadn't been part of it. Her injuries from the debacle in Chechnya had been what put an end to her time as an active field agent. In fact, Matty had clearly considered splitting up their team more than once and outside forces, more than their own arguments, were what had kept them together. Finally Mac agreed that she needed to know. Matty was concerned and wanted to see the envelope for herself, as well as the picture Bozer had made that generated a positive ID. She ordered the trio to the nearest airport as soon as she could get one of the company jets there.

While Mac had been on the phone with Matty, Jack had confided in Bozer about Mac's mini-crisis of trust the night before and Bozer looked almost as devastated as Jack felt when the older man stumbled over his explanation of the conversation and his assurance of his loyalties. Somehow Bozer knowing he wasn't involved in any plan to either help or harm Mac without his knowledge was almost as important to him as Mac knowing it. Bozer rushed to reassure him. "He's got to know you'd never hang him out to dry, Jack."

"It's okay, Boze. I mean, other than you, who else has he had that hasn't been up to something behind his back?" Bozer frowned. He'd never thought of it that way. It sure as hell explained a lot about Mac's self-protective-to-the-point-of-stupid habits, like not admitting to being injured, tired, or in any other way in need of help. "I wanted you to know about it though, because he scared me a little last night; he got that faraway look again …"

"Oh, un uh, we are not letting that happen to our boy again, Jack."

Jack clapped him on the back just as Mac came into the room. "You got that right, Bozer."

It resulted in an unspoken agreement to keep Mac out of his own head as much as possible. The flight was only three hours or so long and both Jack and Bozer seemed to think that the best approach was to keep Mac busy, keep him talking. "So this message," Bozer began dubiously as they reached cruising altitude. "Explain to me again how you made any sense of it."

"Yeah, man. It looks like the kind of homework I used to pay somebody to do for me," Jack added.

Mac gave them both a small smile from his spot on the couch. "I told you, it's a code. My dad taught me when I was really young. He gave me a periodic table poster for my room and wrote me all kinds of messages and I'd write him back the same way. It helped me memorize the whole table by the time I started school and I'd gotten the basics of the five reactions down too because it made decoding easier."

Jack liked the spark of what almost looked like happy nostalgia on Mac's face so he sat down near him and asked, "How does it work again?"

This time Mac actually grinned and took the envelope back out, leaving it now in its clear evidence bag that Matty had asked them to use to avoid further contamination of the evidence. "Like I said before, it's actually really easy. Some of it is just using the element symbols to spell. Then there's the formulas that are missing something and you have to fill in the reaction to get the element. Where it's a name plus an '!' you use the first letter of the Latin name. If it's a symbol with a + you use the element on the opposite side of the table and a – means you skip back one group. You insert vowels based on what number is next to the element if there isn't one in the symbol. Then if there are arrows you …"

"Okay, there, partner. I think I get the idea. There is no way to put a code your dad taught you when you were in kindergarten into enough Jack Dummy Talk so I'll understand. You don't hafta keep rubbin' it in."

Mac laughed. It sounded a little forced, but at least the smile touched his eyes this time, Jack thought to himself.

Bozer agreed with Jack. "Yeah man, I know a little chem and all, but holy science nerd, Batman. You figured this all out when you were five?"

Mac shrugged. "Memorizing the code and the table and being able to read and write in it fast was worth prizes. The better I did, the better stuff I earned. It took me until I was almost seven to really have it down."

Bozer grinned and shook his head. "Oh, okay. It took you until you were seven. So clearly it's not a big deal."

Mac just shrugged. It didn't seem like that big a deal to him. "You knew every line in Star Wars by the time you were seven. I promise you this wasn't any different."

"Mmmmhmmm," Jack said dubiously as he held up the paper Mac and transcribed the message onto. It read only:

 _Wes, I'm sorry. Beware. They are everywhere. Come home. I'll explain._

Finally, Jack couldn't stand it anymore. "Explain how a note for 'Wes' belongs to you."

Mac actually flushed. "It was a nerdy nickname thing …"

Bozer grinned. "Is that why the first model you ever built outta paper clips was the _Enterprise_?"

Mac just cleared his throat.

"This is why it took you so long to warm up to Sheldon on _BBT_ ," Bozer chuckled warmly. "You had a hero."

This time Mac grinned. "Well, I was definitely a member of the _Wesley Crushers_. _TNG_ reruns with my dad are some of my favorite memories."

Jack raised a single eyebrow. "I dunno what you geeks are talkin' about, but I know I don't like any of this."

"I do," Mac said, his face suddenly going a little bit hard. "It means we're on the right track to get some answers."

"Do you think ' _home_ ' means LA or Mission City?" Jack asked.

Mac shrugged. "I don't know. But _my_ home is LA. Mission City hasn't felt like home in a long time. And the post mark was LA. We'll start there."

Bozer and Jack both started to ask him something, but Mac wedged himself into the corner of the couch and leaned back like he was about to try to take a nap for the last hour or so of the flight. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to pretend to sleep on a plane."

They chuckled at his honesty and his implied request for some mental privacy and they moved off toward the table nearer the forward windows to talk and leave Mac in peace … Well, neither one of them thought he'd get much peace, but at least, he'd have some quiet to sort things through.

0-0-0

The whole team was assembled to discuss the latest developments. Several other coded envelopes had been turned over at various other property management offices around the country and random sheets of paper from some of the addresses associated with both James's known aliases and Harry Jackson had code written on them as well. Mac wanted to be more upset that Matty had gone behind his back and had another ops team looking at some of the HJ residences, but since this wasn't really about him, at least in theory, he held his tongue. Mac quickly confirmed that all of the pieces of evidence said the same thing and wrote out the specs of the code for Phoenix's cryptographers in case anything else was found. Then he'd sat down heavily in a corner chair in the War Room, as though insulating himself from the rest of the team's discussion of the mission. Seeing him draw into himself, Jack situated himself as close to Mac as he thought he could without irritating his younger partner. They both glanced up when Matty cleared her throat.

"Bozer do you think you could take his drawing and make some alterations," Matty asked, frowning slightly.

"Sure, Boss-lady. Whatever you need. Gimme a minute to scan it in to the system so I can do it digitally and leave the original alone."

Jack was looking at Matty in a way that Mac knew meant he thought he knew where she was going with her train of thought. Mac figured he probably did. Jack's gut instincts for stuff like that were eerily perfect, and Jack had too much education and experience related to reading people and predicting their behavior for Mac to really doubt him. Riley was working to assist Bozer on the technical side of things, Matty and Patricia were focused on what they were doing, Todd got up and left to take a phone call, and Steve was frowning at a file he was rifling through, so Mac felt it was relatively safe to lean toward Jack and whisper, "What is it?"

Jack gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. "She knows something." He paused. "She doesn't know that yet, thinks she just suspects something. But she knows she's right already. Just look at 'er. Her body language, expression, posture. She's sure. Just her brain is catching up with her gut at the moment."

Mac observed the small group for a moment. "Yeah … You're right. I see it. She does know something." He looked at the group again. "And Patricia suspects something. She doesn't know it yet either, but it's rising to the surface."

Jack nodded slowly as Bozer wrapped up what he was doing and started keying in the commands to get his work on the digital display at the front of the room. When the altered sketch was imposed over a resized picture of Mac's father and the computer melded the images, yielding an aged photograph a line formed across Matty's forehead. Patricia gave a small smile and spoke. "That's James. Nicely done, Wilt."

Bozer grinned, but Matty spoke before he could say anything. "Riley, what does your computer program give us as an aged image. Full color, please."

Riley's keys clicked for a few moments and a new image appeared. "There," she said.

"Can you alter that with specifics?"

"Sure," Riley shrugged.

Matty was frowning in earnest now. "Give him light brown hair, almost blond, no grey." Clicking keys filled the silence and they watched the man's hair color change from salt and pepper dark brown to just a few shades darker than Mac's own butter blond. An expression of near recognition flicked across Jack's face and Mac noticed that more than what his own brain was trying to tell him. "Now, blue eyes and round glasses with dark frames."

Matty's voice had taken on a dreamlike quality to Mac, although he wasn't sure if she was speaking slowly or if his brain was just trying to protect him from what he'd already worked out. Riley made the changes and everyone looked at the image in silence for a few moments. Then they all looked at Mac, trying to gauge his reaction to what they could all plainly see.

Finally, Mac spoke, his lips feeling oddly numb. "So we know a new alias, I guess." He paused; no one said anything, but Jack looked like he really wanted to, if only he could think of something to say. "James MacGyver is apparently also Marc Butler, Director of Oversight since Patricia was arrested." He gave Patricia a hard look, but his voice was perfectly even when he asked, "Did you know?"

Patricia couldn't quite meet his eye. "Mac, I wasn't certain of anything, but …"

He nodded, although what he was agreeing to he wasn't sure. He got slowly to his feet, politely excused himself, and started down the hall, intending to get a drink out of one of the vending machines and walk off the jittery feeling buzzing in his head, his whole body really. He got about halfway there when he had to make a detour into the men's room, wishing very much that he hadn't eaten on the plane. He was splashing his face with cold water after rinsing out his mouth when Jack found him. He stepped into the restroom very tentatively for such a big man.

"You doin' okay, bud?"

Mac dried his face on a paper towel. He opened his mouth to speak and then thought he might be sick again so he just shook his head.

"What can I do, Mac?" Jack asked with barely concealed genuine distress. Then he found himself almost knocked off his feet by a very uncharacteristic and fierce hug. One corner of Jack's mouth lifted as he hugged his partner back. Jack was a guy prone to hugs for everything from the birth of a baby, to the loss of a loved one, to getting the last six pack of your favorite beer or a ten dollar lottery winner, having come from a large affectionate family. Mac on the other hand was typically very reserved, physically and otherwise. If he was hugging, he needed it; was more often than not seeking some grounding force, hoping to be held to earth by something real and trustworthy. After a minute or two Mac mumbled something into his chest. "What was that, partner?" Jack asked gently.

Mac lifted his head and disengaged from the embrace. "I said, I know you want to punch him. Right now I kind of want to kill him."

Jack shook his head. "You know you don't mean that, Mac."

Mac shook his head angrily. "I don't know what I mean at the moment. And I hate that. It pisses me off even more."

Jack patted him on the shoulder and stepped toward the door. "Well … Patty might know how we can arrange a meeting and I don't she's inclined to try to pull another one over on any of us at the moment, so why don't we go see what the plan is." Mac nodded. "You can decide if you want to blow his ass up or whatever after I knock out a couple of his teeth for ya. Whadaya say?"

Mac managed a slightly watery smile. "Deal."


	8. Chapter 8

"You've got to be kidding!" Mac snapped, looking more betrayed than angry, in spite of his tone.

"I'm sorry, Mac," Matty said with a shake of her head. "If this is going to be an official Phoenix mission, you're still on the bench because of your shoulder and I don't think we can get Foster to go on record as clearing you without you jumping through all the hoops we talked about before we decided you would go dark that way."

Mac looked ready to push away from the table, but Jack spoke before his temper could get the better of him.

"Well, now, I'm not so sure this should be an official mission," Jack began. "Seein' as how the guy we're goin' after has a spot on Oversight under an assumed identity and we don't know who else might be compromised by that. We're assuming that Mac's dad is a good guy on Patty's say so," Jack paused and glanced through the glass to where Thornton was sitting at a table with Milton, being question and questioned again about every aspect of her story to date while the rest of the team met with Matty. "And I don't know about anybody else, but much as I'd love to trust the woman who hired me and was my boss for years … I just can't quite get there."

Mac was nodding, now more focused on the mission at hand than on his lack of medical clearance. "Me either," he contributed, giving Patricia a dark look through the glass. It was a look that she caught as she glanced toward the office and quickly looked away from.

Riley glanced up from her laptop where she had been data mining local housing deeds, leases, and rentals after they discovered that the Director of Oversight's opulent Malibu home was just a façade, entirely devoid of any evidence of being lived in other than cleaning staff and lights and televisions on timers. "I'm definitely on Team Trust No One right now," she said. "Especially because I think I know where Marc Butler is actually hanging his hat these days." She gave Mac a small reassuring smile and spun the laptop around so everyone could see what she was doing.

In spite of himself, Mac smiled a little at the non-descript but cheerful house boat on the screen. It was painted a pleasant turquoise that reminded Mac of his mother's favorite earrings, the one's she had always worn for special occasions and holidays. If that bright piece of nostalgia hadn't been enough, the name painted in neat white script _Land's End_ was the same as the title of a poem that his father had once had framed on his desk. Mac remembered thinking it was a funny poem for a scientist to like, but when he'd said so, his father said it was a metaphor, for coming to the edge of what you know, and diving in anyway. He also said that as a coastal New Englander he had a respect for the sea that a boy from an inland Pacific town might never know. Mac had just thought he was trying to close off another real conversation at that point and had practically stomped out of his father's office at the ripe old age of nine, thinking he understood the sea quite well enough, thank you.

Riley was squinting at the expression on his face as she pulled the computer back toward herself. She knew she was right, that this was the place, but she almost didn't want to say so. "It's moored in del Rey." Collective eyebrows went up. "The name of the slip is _Beth-Car Ellen_."

Mac frowned at the name in the marina address. Ellen was, of course his mother's name. The rest sounded Hebrew from his limited experiences with religion and short stints on missions in Israel. "Which means?" he asked, his voice sounding oddly far away to his own ears, and must have sounded off to everyone based on how they were all looking at him.

Riley cleared her throat, since she'd looked up the meaning immediately upon finding the place. "It means, roughly, 'House of Ellen's Lamb."

"Goddamnit," he swore, but his voice was subdued. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, in a gesture of frustration and nervousness everyone at the table was all too familiar with. "That's what he meant in the note when he said 'come home'. Son of a bitch!"

This time his voice had picked up a little heat. Jack and Steve were both frowning, but Riley and Matty were looking at Mac with both sympathy and concern. Jack broke the silence that had followed Mac's reaction. "Okay, so we've obviously found him … But I'm confused as to how we know."

Mac shook his head, his face faintly flushed with what could have been real fury, or it could have been an effort at holding back tears, and no one at that table was inclined to ask. Matty was quiet as she answered. "Angus is Scottish for lamb, Jack."

"Oh." Jack's eyes widened, and Steve was preparing himself for the argument that was about to happen between his teammate and his boss. He could see Mac and Matty both preparing for it. In less than a minute, it began.

"Matty, you have to let me go in there." Mac was breathing like he'd just done sprints around the office's indoor track.

"Mac, I'd love to. But we still don't know Butler's motivation in contacting you." She very deliberately didn't use Mac's father's real name. "And despite the risk that someone else might be compromised, I wouldn't feel comfortable with you going in with less that at least emergency backup. Which I can't authorize unless you are cleared for the field. And as previously mentioned, you're not. Jack can lead a team and …"

Mac was on his feet and pacing around the table, his irritation and nervous energy overcoming his usual coolly professional demeanor. This was too personal. "No, damnit. This op is mine!"

"Mac …"

"Tell Foster to clear me! You're his boss!" She started to shake her head and his hand brushed through his hair in another gesture of pure frustration at the corner he was in. He knew full well he'd done a good job of overplaying his injury. He also knew that it wasn't all an act. But he hadn't been willing to admit that to Matty or anyone else, because it would have kept him out of the game completely. "Then change the rules! Steve will vouch for me!" He wasn't sure if that was true, but he was a better gamble than trying to get Foster to clear him, because even if he told the doctor he'd been faking the pain he was in, the man wouldn't believe it, given the number of times Mac had been less than honest in the past.

"Mac, I can't just change the rules for you. If Steve is active on your team, he's not eligible to participate in standard protocols in anything other than an emergency situation. This might constitute an emergency for you. And I understand that. But Phoenix, and the legitimate members of the Oversight board will not." Matty said, voice full of patient sadness.

Mac flopped down into the chair again, at something of a loss. Steve sighed and decided to offer the one solution that would get his teammate what he needed, at least in the short term. "Well, then, Director Webber, I'd like to officially request to be taken off active status and placed in Medical on a temporary staff position. Let's put it down in the paperwork as the Mrs. doesn't care for me being gone so much with the little one so small."

Matty gave him a sly smile at his elegant solution and picked up her tablet, making a few quick keystrokes. "Alright. Done." She looked from him to Mac. "So, what does Mac need to do for you to authorize him to go out on this mission."

Steve waved his hand for the form, which he signed and passed back to Matty immediately. When he answered, he didn't look at her, but directly at Mac. "Take care of business out there." Mac started to respond with a thank you, but Steve interrupted. "And … don't forget that I know you, Mac. If it's still bothering you when …"

Mac interrupted defensively, "It's not …"

" _WHEN_ you get back," Steve continued over him. "I expect you to come in and have it taken care of. I'll stay on and over see it myself if you need me to. Understood?" Mac hesitated for a moment, and Steve fell back on a tone he cultivated in the military. "I said, ' _understood_ ' or do I need to tear up that form, MacGyver."

"No, no, no," Mac hurried a reply. "Understood. Jeez, you're worse than Jack when he remembers how pulling rank used to actually work on me." Mac grinned at both of them, pleased to be green lit for this mission, and glad as hell that he had some friends like them.

Matty gave them all another smile that had just a hint of the old Matty the Hun in it. "You guys are going to need a medic on the team while Steve is out of the mix covering your asses on paper."

Jack felt his eyes roll without even meaning to let them. "Aw, Matty, we'll be fine for one mission, you don't hafta go saddling us with some …"

Matty's grin became positively wicked, as she decided exactly how she was going to remind them that she hated violating protocol, even when it was the best option. "Mel wants some field experience and she's more than qualified."

The collective groan of the entire team, including Steve whose groan was a little sympathetic, made Matty chuckle. "If this is as simple as you were insisting a minute ago when you swore you didn't need a backup team, you won't have anything to worry about."

Todd had heard his teammates groaning protest and stuck his head in the door. "What's going on in here?"

Mac shook his head, but got up from the table to head to tactical to gear up. He gave a resigned sigh and a slight chuckle. "Trust me. You don't want to know." He shook his head again. "Let's just go get our gear."


	9. Chapter 9

Mac and Jack looked down on the _Land's End_ rising and falling with the gentle swells in the marina from their vantage point in the parking lot just above it. Jack had talked Matty into keeping the rest of the team as more of a reserve, stationed up the block in the van, while he and Mac took point, near the boat. He said, very sensibly, that if their package was as good as he seemed to be, he'd smell a full ops team coming from a mile away and that it would be better if just the two of them went in, at least initially. Matty couldn't argue with his assessment, but understood his tacit reasons better than he probably wanted her to. Jack wanted Mac to get to have this meeting with something resembling privacy. The whole team seemed to sense it and Todd set it up tactically. Even Riley, who on one hand wanted to be there for Mac, but on the other thought he might need space, offered to stay back at Phoenix trying to trace all the connections between the properties and figure out which ones really belonged to this operative, who'd been out in the cold for over a decade, and which might be Organization traps.

Every passing minute told Jack he'd made the right call. At the moment, Mac made Jack think of an arrow knocked on the string and ready to fly, but had no target. Mac's first impulse had been to just go knock on the door, but he'd been very reasonable when Jack suggested they should wait until they ID'd Butler, since it was still totally possible that anything they encountered was an Organization trap. If they'd purpose-built him a girlfriend, setting up this situation to ensnare him wasn't all that big a stretch. That was disregarding the code Mac was sure his father designed, but, Jack pointed out, if they'd caught up with his father nothing guaranteed they hadn't gotten that code out of him since the last time anyone in LA had seen the Oversight committee members was weeks ago. Jack was about to suggest calling Matty and allowing aquatic tactical to attempt to approach when the door opened and a tall, lean, man with blond hair and sunglasses came out to water some hanging plants interspersed around the deck. The man matched the pictures they had and their own limited experiences with Butler, whom they almost always saw behind a desk in a room with staged lighting, although this man walked with a pronounced limp, looking like one leg was maybe shorter than the other. Jack didn't even dare glance in Mac's direction, but he felt his partner tense; the arrow drawn back by a shaking hand.

Mac almost whispered, "That's him." He glanced at Jack, at an uncharacteristic loss. "What should we do, Jack?"

Jack looked over at his partner. The poor kid was pale, breathing too fast, shaking and completely unaware of it; he looked like someone coming down with the flu, a state Jack knew Mac hated no matter what was causing it. "Now that we have a visual ID, you wanna just go see what he says?" Jack asked kindly.

Mac thought about it for an interminable moment. Then he nodded. "Yeah, if you're good with it, I think I do."

Jack heard the almost question in Mac's words so he just nodded as the man on the deck of the boat ducked back inside the recesses of the house. "Alright, let's go."

Jack radioed the rest of the team that they had a positive visual and they were going to attempt to make contact. He gave the go ahead for the team to move in and be prepared to back them up if their target wasn't inclined to come quietly. Jack glanced at Mac. He didn't care much for the idea of confronting a former spy, who'd been burned a decade and a half ago without body armor and a full tactical squad, but they hoped, or at least Mac did, his message meant he was trying to come in from the cold; that he was willing to talk. Besides, getting Mac to wear armor even when he knew they were headed into a shit show was like pulling teeth. When their backup was moving into position, they climbed out of the car and headed the short distance to the dock. Mac normally had a tendency to stride ahead, his usual gait as quick and purposeful as his thoughts, but this time he walked across the parking lot right next to Jack, not quite hesitating, but clearly not in much of a hurry either. They were about to step across the small gap between the dock and the deck of the boat when Jack noticed Mac hesitate visibly for the first time. "You sure you want to do this Mac?"

Mac didn't look at him, but said, "No," will a small smile and head shake. "But I need to."

As they approached the door, Jack stepped to the side, hand on his sidearm. He didn't draw it out of respect for Mac but he was ready to do so if anyone so much as blinked wrong. Jack smiled slightly when he witnessed the game face moment. Mac went from looking like a seventeen year old who was positive he was about to be rejected by the prettiest girl in school to the complete professional Jack was used to seeing on the job, cool, comfortable in any situation, prepared for whatever might come next. He reached out and gave the door a businesslike knock. When the door opened a few minutes later Jack's eyes were on the target rather than Mac but he felt the shock of recognition stiffen his partner's body, could almost hear him thinking that he couldn't believe he'd been in the same room with this man and not seen through his disguise. What he saw on Butler's face was recognition, brief pain and a lingering sadness, as well as a measure of pride that was quickly concealed behind a knowing smirk.

All Mac saw was the smirk as his father said, "Hello, Angus. Took you long enough."

What happened next surprised Mac as much as his partner, because without thinking, without hesitation, without consideration for any consequences, he struck the man and sent him sprawling back into the house. The second the action started to play out, Jack had drawn his weapon, but he saw it would be unnecessary since the man on the floor was sitting up, blood gushing from an obviously broken nose, chuckling in what could only be described as an approving manner. Mac was snapping his hand to take out the sting of the punch on his knuckles but he was smiling, a big somebody just surprised me with a cupcake grin. When he met Jack's eye the grin grew. "Sorry, man, I know I said you could do the punching, but I've actually wanted to do that since I was twelve years old."

Jack patted him on the back as they entered the house boat. "Feel good?"

"Better than it had any right to," he answered, glancing at Jack with another grin. Then seeing the man on the floor struggling to get up, Mac shook his head and extended a hand to help him up off the floor and into a nearby chair. He grabbed a box of tissues off a lamp stand and handed them to his father, noting with some satisfaction that in addition to breaking his nose, the punch had knocked out one of the blue contact lenses that were part of the Butler disguise, and a familiar dark brown eye was staring up at him from one side of the just-shy-of-familiar face. Jack saw Mac's smile leave his face as he stared back and his eyes went a little hard. His voice held something of a defiant younger version of himself when he said, "I'm not sorry I did that."

The man pressed tissues to his face, but he didn't break eye contact. "Nor should you be. But I am sorry. For a lot of things. Not that it makes much difference, I suppose." He paused and realized the tissues were already soaked through. He took some more out of the box with bloody hands. "I understand you have questions for me, most of which are probably in your official capacity, but I think before you start an interrogation, I may need some medical attention, if that's possible."

Mac nodded, and Jack noticed that a hint of the smile was back as he took out his cell phone. "Hey Jack, I'm going to get Matty on the line so we can head back in to Phoenix and get Mr. Butler's answers on record. You want to radio Mel and let her know we've got a patient for her before we can move out?"

Jack had a feeling once Mac's walls came down later this denial of vulnerability in front of his father was going to be some heavy stuff, but for right now he was just so damned proud of how the kid was handling himself, he played along with it. "That would be my genuine pleasure, Mac."


	10. Chapter 10

"Don't be such a baby," Mel snorted as she placed her thumbs on either side of her reluctant patient's nose.

"I'm beginning to understand why you have a reputation around Phoenix, Ms. Sullivan."

Mel didn't respond with anything other than her intended action. There was a crunching popping noise and the man let out a gasp that bordered on a shout, and she was already walking away, dropping her gloves into a nearby trashcan as Butler put his head between his knees trying not to throw up or pass out. She turned and gave him a glare even though he wasn't looking up. "And I'm beginning to understand why everyone in Oversight always has their heads so firmly up their asses. You're in charge of them." Then she gave Milton a nod. "You can secure him for transport now; he's probably done bleeding for the moment." She paused, looking around at everyone, noticing Jack was out on the deck talking on the phone, presumably with Matty. Then she seemed to remember something. "You," she pointed at Mac who was flipping through some papers from on top of the microwave, but glanced up when she spoke; her tone rarely invited further conversation. She tilted her head in a commanding gesture. "Outside."

Mac looked to Milton who was in charge of processing the scene, eyes practically begging to be told there was something he needed to be doing, but was met with a sympathetic shrug. Determined not to get into an argument in front of Butler (Mac thought briefly how much easier it was to think of him that way and wondered what Sissy would say to his newfound tool for compartmentalizing), Mac docilely followed Mel out into the bright afternoon sun. When they were a few steps away from the door, Mac gave her a grin. "I've always thought you were kind of sadistic, but I've never really appreciated that it might have some advantages until today. Have you thought about working with Interrogation?"

Mac's affable expression was a little forced, but she, like Jack, approved of how Mac was valiantly trying to cope with all of this like a professional. She hadn't known how much history Mac had on this case and when shed been briefed in felt herself developing a slight soft spot for the blond and his team. Although to be fair, she'd always had a little one. She gave him a slight smile, which he didn't quite seem to know how to take. Then she couldn't resist a wink. "He didn't use the safety word."

Mac felt himself flush, though whether it was because she clearly knew what the agents said about her talent for dominating everyone or the innuendo of it he couldn't have said, but he couldn't resist asking, "Which is?"

Her nose twitched with a little wrinkle he'd never noticed was sort of cute before. Usually he was too worried about what she might be about to inflict on him to think of her as anything like cute. She increased his estimation of her further when she deadpanned, "Flugelhorn."

"I'll file that away for future reference," he chuckled. Then he sighed. "Thanks for sorting him out. I shouldn't have hit him. It was unprofessional as hell."

"You're welcome. And everyone who knows who he is wanted to hit him. But we're all glad you got to." She held out her hand expectantly. "Now, let's sort you out before we get a move on."

His brow creased in feigned confusion. "I'm already sorted. Catharsis is good for lots of things."

Damned if he wasn't just as charming as always, especially when he planned on trying to get his own way. She responded to the charm with her typical business-like approach. "Don't play dumb with me. Let's see your hand, Mac."

Almost involuntarily he glanced down at his skinned knuckles. "It's fine."

She shook her head. "You've come into Medical with a dislocated shoulder and said exactly the same thing in _exactly_ the same tone."

He was about to protest the veracity of her statement when they were joined by Jack. "You have," he chuckled. "I was there."

Mel elbowed Jack with an amused roll of her eyes. "Like you're any better, Dalton. Reference your last flu shot, ya wimp." She raised her eyebrows at Mac. "I've already established a willingness to sit on and/or dope either one of you unconscious to make sure you get the care you need. You guys give me a hard time, but I care about you … and I know what I'm doing."

Almost against his will, one edge of Mac's lips quirked up. "You _are_ good. Nobody would say you aren't. You're just a little mean. And kind of gleeful about it."

"I think anyone who can get either of you to stay put long enough to get put back together is entitled to a little glee." She smiled at both of them then. "And I'm allowed to be amused that two spies, both of whom can think of at least twenty ways to kill me at any given moment and do the deed without breaking a sweat, turn into eight-year-olds the minute they see a set of scrubs. It's a little satisfying to tease you when you've made a bunch of extra work for me." Now she looked at them both seriously, her innate compassion more apparent than she normally let it be. "I'll hassle you in Medical, mostly because you're already halfway to okay just by being there. But I won't do anything other than be the best medic I can out here in the field. Okay?"

Mac contemplated her for a long moment before he gave her a short nod and just held his hand out for her inspection. Her first action was to take a spray can from her bag and apply its contents to Mac's bloody knuckles. His breath hissed between his teeth. "Damn," he said wincing.

"Antiseptic. Human mouths are filthy and you cut yourself on the man's teeth, pretty clearly."

He nodded, unable to help smirking a little again. _Took me long enough, did it? That punch was pretty quick though._ Once the spray started drying she pressed various points on his hand until he pulled away, giving her a distinctly dirty look. "Flugelhorn. Jeez."

She smiled. "I don't think anything is broken. Just bruised; but you should probably let Steve or whomever take an x-ray when we get back in."

Just then, Milton came out of the house with Butler in handcuffs, reinforced by a zip tie. The team wasn't taking chances this time. Mac glanced at her, wanting to follow, and she gave him a nod indicating that she was done torturing him for the moment. Jack lingered for a minute to check in.

"You and I both know I'm the knuckles in this outfit. And he hit him hard. Nothing's broken, for sure?" he asked.

Mel's eyes followed him. "Nothing in his hand, I don't think. But look at his face."

Jack did. Up close Mac was doing one hell of a job at treating this like another day at the office, but when you got a little distance and the kid's personal charisma was less of a factor in how you perceived him, any idiot could see that he was a whisker away from falling apart. Jack nudged Mel to move out with the rest of the team. As they caught up and he got a better look at his partner Jack sighed. "Yeah, he's gonna feel this break later."

0-0-0

Jack gave his partner a sideways glance for perhaps the tenth time in an hour. Mac was leaned back in the chair, practically glaring at the one way glass, sipping a coffee, and occasionally rubbing at an ache in his forehead with an absent gesture that spoke more of irritation than of pain. For the third time in as many minutes, Mac sighed heavily.

Jack leaned toward him, keeping his voice low, as dictated by protocol when observing an interrogation, and said, "Don't enjoy the smell bullshit, bud?"

Mac darted a look at Jack, then returned his gaze to the man across from them through the glass, and shrugged. "After all this time, Jack, I wonder if him saying the sky was blue would sound like the truth."

Jack put a hand on Mac's shoulder and was gratified when his friend managed to look him in the eye without his gaze immediately darting away toward the interrogation room. "I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, bud, but I don't like the feel of what he's telling Matty either."

Mac nodded. "It's sort of like looking into a mirror while holding one facing that mirror. It's just stories that disappear into stories." He signed again. _"'I was an NSA agent that let myself get recruited by the Organization to bring them down but then when I was ready I realized they had some good points'_? What the hell, man? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy someone trying to serve that many masters and really believing they are good enough to untangle a web that complicated even if what they believe is true. Which doesn't seem likely. That's hubris on a scale I can't even contemplate."

He silenced Jack's reply with a gesture as they both heard Matty say, "What about Miss Carpenter's involvement?"

The man gave a small indifferent shrug. "Based on the evidence we had I thought she was clean. All the contacts I'd cultivated at CIA as Butler seemed convinced she was one of theirs as well. When she told the ops team in DC that she was Organization I was surprised. I've rarely been that wrong about someone's allegiances before."

Matty frowned. "Since you were working with DXS as Marc Butler at the time of the incident in Lake Como, were you aware of Ms. Carpenter's extralegal agency manipulation?"

He shrugged again. "It seemed like a legitimate CIA operation. Of course, as I said, the entire intelligence community is so polluted at this point, it's almost impossible to know. And I was on the outs with the Organization at that time and needed to establish myself with them again under the new Butler identity since my alias before that had been ' _killed_ ' in the field to extract an agent that wanted out."

"And her involvement with Thornton? Thornton's role with the Organization?" Matty pressed.

"Patricia was clean. Well, she was obviously loyal to me, but she was also loyal to DXS since she helped to build it. She still felt like she owed me though and wanted to help me bring down the Organization."

"Why?"

"I saved her life once when she was young, helped her establish herself in the intelligence community before things went to hell for me. She tried to help me by protecting your agent as much as she could, more often than not from himself, and when that failed she just threw resources at him until he was as safe as he could be. A life for a life, you see." He glanced at the glass and then back at Matty. "She was trying to help me set up some dummy accounts when Carpenter decided to use her. Patricia was working with me to firm up my Butler identity so I could get back in with the Organization and find out what was going on with their global initiative to acquire bio weapons." He sniffed with irritation. "Carpenter found some of the files and decided to try to get back in Phoenix's good graces. From what I've been able to gather since that was unauthorized by the Organization, it was all about trying to mend fences with …" He paused, swallowing hard and glancing toward the glass again. "Agent MacGyver."

Matty flipped through the file in front of her quietly for a minute. "That nearly worked. Why would she do it, based on your information?"

"She's obsessed, dangerous. Not unlike another Organization employee who's had access to your agent's file for a very long time. I'm afraid I have to take responsibility for how long they've been focused on him. I should have left sooner before anyone had made the connection. I thought if I disappeared, broke all contact, they might leave him alone. Turns out they were still trying to use him against me, up to trying to recruit him via Ms. Carpenter."

Jack was staring at the side of Mac's face, taking in minute changes in his expression. Butler had made numerous references to leaving his family for their own safety. Mac seemed more interested in the details that were being revealed about Murdoc than in his own family drama slowly unfolding.

"So Murdoc has been working for the Organization for a long time then?"

Butler nodded. "Since I first encountered them. He was a very young man at the time, going by the name Dan Connors, though who can say if that was his real name. He was terrifying even then. Fascinated by pain and fear. Since for whatever reasons, medical or psychological, I don't know, he can't feel either. And the more tenacious his subject is in the face of either of those things, the more fascinated he becomes. It's no wonder he's been focused on Angus for so long now. The boy has always been reckless with his own safety and comfort for the benefit of others. I left to try to keep this life from touching him and it seems I drove him right into it."

This was the first time the man had let any real emotion creep into his voice when speaking about Mac, carefully referring to him as Agent MacGyver or 'your agent'. When the man passed a slightly trembling hand over eyes that were rapidly blackening from the break to his nose, Mac got to his feet and headed out the door toward his office. Jack was interested to hear what else Butler might now about Murdoc or Nikki that could help his partner, but decided following Mac was a better way to execute the priority mission of keeping Mac whole and in one piece. Just this time it was a less physically demanding mission was all. What he found down the hall, instead of a Mac finally overcome by emotion and facing the demons of his abandonment was a focused agent talking earnestly with Todd and Riley about another name tied to Murdoc.

Mac leaned against the wall, stuffing his hands in his pockets, wincing slightly at the scrape on his sore knuckles, and taking that hand back out. "And we know his kid's name is Connor. It's not much of a connection, but if Butler is telling the truth about an early alias for Murdoc, even a little connection might be important in figuring out who he really is, which might tell us something about where to look for him."

Todd was nodding when Jack joined them. "I'll reach out to some people, see if Dan Connors trips anybody's memory."

Riley agreed. "I'll be in my office seeing if I can find anything on it, too. Maybe cross referencing that weird medical condition with the name will give us something."

"Thanks," Mac said to both of them as they left, and then he turned to Jack. "Bored with hearing the same circuitous story, too?"

Jack frowned at him, concern evident in his expression and voice. "Well, it wasn't all boring if we got a name."

Mac nodded in apparent agreement, but then shrugged. "Might be nothing. Guy can't seem to tell the truth for lying, as the saying goes … That is the Granma Dalton saying, right?"

Jack chuckled. "She used to say it about my dad all the time. That man did have a gift for storytelling to try to keep himself out of trouble."

Mac headed toward the elevator and Jack followed, wondering what his partner would do next, since they hadn't been dismissed for the day by the boss yet. Mac tossed him a grin, the strain under it only just visible to Jack's trained eye. "How'd that work out for him?"

Jack grinned back, hoping his looked at genuine as Mac's. "Usually not so hot. But he always had good people around him to bail him out. He was a terrible liar, but a good friend, I guess."

Mac sighed, thinking he would give about anything to have a dad who was a good man and a bad liar. No such luck though it seemed. Instead of dwelling on it, which his subconscious well telling him was a terrible idea, he nudged Jack affectionately. "Guess you inherited something from him other than being a halfway decent stick jockey."

"And my classic movie star good looks," he grinned more genuinely, and struck a pose.

Mac chuckled as the elevator doors opened. "You wish, big guy."

Jack was looking around at the floor they were on with something very near true surprise.

"Mac, whatcha doin'?"

"Going to Medical to get my hand x-rayed."

"On purpose?"

"Yeah, Mel said I should," he said matter-of-factly.

Jack wondered if this sudden impulse to take care of himself properly came from being told that Thornton and his father hadn't believed he could do it, but he didn't say so; instead he teased, "But nobody ordered you to?"

Then Mac made Jack feel a little better by rolling his eyes. "Steve texted me about twenty minutes ago and said I could come down when I wanted to take a break or he could have Matty remind me when she finishes up." He had to laugh as he said, "Bastard. Now he and Mel are going to conspire against us."

Jack paused at the doors of the infirmary and made his face extremely serious. "You know what, I think it might be time to retire."

Mac laughed again, easing Jack's concern for him a little further. "Nah, man, we'll be alright. I know the safety word now."

Jack patted him on the shoulder thinking that Mac had come an awfully long way; maybe he was just relieved to have some resolution around his dad and he was coping as well as he appeared to be. Sissy had worked stranger miracles in her career, and Mac was certainly unique. "Hey, while you step into the torture chamber, I'm going to get us some take-out. Whatcha want?"

Mac shrugged indifferently, his self-assured expression crumpling for a split second before he fixed it firmly back in place. Then he subtly let Jack know how not alright he was with one quiet phrase. "I'm not hungry, Jack."

 _Well, shit._


	11. Chapter 11

When Matty finally turned them loose for the night Jack convinced Bozer to see if Beth wanted some quality time together after his most recent foray into the field. Beth had been more than enthusiastic about an evening together when he texted her, but before he left to meet his girlfriend he gave Jack a hard look. "I know you got his back, man, but he might not be ready to deal with this stuff. Don't push, alright?"

Jack nodded. "I know, Boze, I just want him to have some quiet so he can decide and I think I might be the better choice since I never knew his dad at all, you know?" Bozer frowned. "Just remember you were the guy who tried to get him to get back in contact with him."

Jack started to get defensive so Bozer just held up a hand to stop him. "Jack … It was a good thing okay? Just he's gotta deal with it now. Again. And even if he really doesn't care what happens to his old man, which he told me more than once, seeing him is going to bring back all that other stuff. Even if he doesn't talk about it with you, make sure you keep an ear out tonight. His dreams, man, they've been worse again lately."

While Jack hadn't needed the reminder, he appreciated that Bozer was thinking the same things he was, and when Mac had thrashed himself noisily awake for the first time just after midnight, Jack had been right there to help Mac free himself from one of the worst nightmares he could remember having in a long while. It had taken him nearly a half hour before he was ready to say much of anything. When he finally did it was about what Jack expected. "Hey, at least I haven't dreamt about the war in a while."

"I guess we take our victories where we can find 'em," Jack said in as agreeable a voice as he could manage. "Dream about your folks again?"

Mac just nodded and mumbled "Mmmhmm."

Jack shifted his position at the foot of the bed. "You wanna talk about it?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

As predicted, Mac had shrugged. "Same old shit, Jack."

Then he gestured for Jack to move and as soon as his feet weren't pinned by the blankets Jack had been sitting on he got up and headed out into the living room. Jack just followed, not saying anything, not hovering too close, just looking calm and supportive. This had the feeling of a conspiracy. Mac flopped down on the couch and waved a hand to let Jack know he was welcome. Then he asked with all the good humor he could muster, "So did you draw the short straw when you and Boze decided how you were going to handle my inevitable nervous breakdown tonight?"

Jack shook his head. The kid was trying to treat it lightly, but he was irritated; Jack could tell. "You know it wasn't like that Mac. You're never anyone's version of the short straw, Kid."

Mac glanced away for a minute, but when he looked back he was wearing a small smile. "So there was no let's-hold-Mac-together conspiracy?"

"Well, I mean we talked!" Jack said a little defensively. "You can see why your best friends would be worried about you now, can't you?"

Mac's shoulders tensed but he nodded. "Yeah, I guess I can. I don't feel like having a nervous breakdown though … I thought I would, you know, when we finally found him. Or that I'd find out I'd been wrong about him all this time, or that he'd say he was sorry … or that he wasn't, hell I don't know." Mac's voice was rising; he wasn't shouting, but anyone could have seen that he wanted to. " _Took you long enough?_ Who the hell abandons their kid, hides from him, strings him along in a massive game of Hide and Seek, and then says something so goddamned flippant?"

Jack risked patting him on the shoulder. "A real asshole?"

Mac's tension broke just a little. "Yeah, I think that's probably pretty fair. So instead of falling apart, I kind of still want to take him apart. I want to know what he know … any why he bothered to stay in the game once he was burned."

"You want to question him yourself?" Jack asked carefully.

Mac looked thoughtful for a minute, got up and went to the refrigerator. Jack was hoping maybe the kid had finally decided to eat something, but instead him came back with an icepack, which he applied to his knuckles with a wince and then rested his hand on a pillow on his lap. "I think maybe I do. I think, based on what I saw, he might reveal more to me than to Matty. He's up to something still. He's had some end game this whole time. And I'm not it. But part of him obviously feels bad about what happened between us. It might be the leverage we need."

Jack thought about it. "I think you might be right. You gonna be okay to do that though?"

Mac shrugged again. "It's not going to make things any worse, Jack." He shifted the icepack again and flinched. "Ah, man, that hurts."

Jack chuckled this time, thinking he could relax a little. Mac wasn't okay, but he wasn't really pretending to be either. Just there was still a mission in front of them, and he needed to deal with that first. Jack could appreciate that. "Steve was sure you didn't break anything? Or were you just blowin' smoke so I'd take you home before Mel could decide to keep you in her clutches?"

"Nothing's broken, Jackass. Just sore. I hit him really hard and my form wasn't the best. I was too pissed off," he admitted.

"We'll go in together and pitch the interrogation to Matty in the morning. I'm sure she'll approve it." Mac nodded. "It's only like 1:30; you want to try goin' back to sleep for a couple of hours, bud? Tomorrow will probably be a hell of a long day."

Mac shrugged, then just shook his head. "I kind of just want to sit here and maybe watch Die Hard. You up for it?"

That was Mac's way of saying that he didn't want to be alone, that he wanted Jack to stay with him, because no way was Angus MacGyver going to sit there and watch Bruce Willis all alone of his own accord. Jack grinned and then headed toward the kitchen. "Sure. If you'll help me eat some of the left over Thai food I got for dinner."

Mac shook his head with an affectionate frown on his face. "I'm a fully functioning adult. You don't have to fuss over me. I know when I need to eat, Jack."

Jack brought back an obscene quantity of food in cardboard containers. "And when was the last time you decided that was exactly?"

Mac rolled his eyes. "Maybe like yesterday morning …"

Jack passed him a container of some spicy chicken dish that Mac always ordered but Jack could never pronounce and said, "I'm suspending your fully functioning adult privileges until you've had a decent meal."

Mac shook his head, but he grinned as he took out a forkful of chicken. "Jackass."


	12. Chapter 12

Jack had dozed off in front of the television sometime just before sunrise, not an uncommon occurrence. When he woke to the silent alarm on his watch he found Mac showered, dressed, and cooking a fairly elaborate breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon, and sweet potato home fries. When Jack got to the counter and slid onto a stool, orange juice and a coffee were pushed across the counter toward him. "Morning, Jack," Mac said with a reasonably convincing effort at sounding like it was just another day that ended in 'y'.

"Good morning. You get any sleep?" he asked mildly. Mac hesitated for a split second before just shaking his head and turning back toward flipping the bacon. "Well then, what are you doin' all bright eyed and bushy tailed cooking for half of Los Angeles?"

Mac heaped food onto Jack's plate and put it in front of him before hesitating almost a full minute and then plating himself up a much smaller portion. "Trying to earn back my fully functioning adult privileges," he said with a fairly genuine grin and a swig of coffee.

Jack showed him an overly elaborate frown accompanied by a raised eyebrow until Mac folded up a slice of bacon in some rye toast and started chewing. Then Jack gave him the grin he'd been saving. "Alright, I have unbooted your adulting privileges. Don't let it go to your head though, kid."

Mac chuckled. Now that he was eating, he found he actually was hungry, which he had to acknowledge was usually the case. The last time he'd gotten into his own head too much and dropped a couple of pounds Sissy had brought it up, very gently, saying someone who was looking might see it as a means of self-harm, if he wanted to talk about that. He hadn't, but he'd been making every effort to realize when he was doing it. He'd mentioned it to Jack one night after a tough mission and a couple of beers and Jack had done a phenomenal job of not so much nagging him about it anymore, but rather gently reminding him that he was maybe heading down a not so great path. Joking with him last night … this morning … had actually been exactly what he needed to realize he'd been doing it again without the associated shame spiral that used to come with it.

"I'll try not to." He paused but then decided it was better to say what he was thinking now, before they got to the office and he was too stressed out. "I may need you to adult for me again later if today sucks as much as I have a feeling it's going to."

Jack had assured him that since he'd been doing it for years now he could probably be counted on for another day. Mac tossed a napkin at him then, reminding him that occasionally stepping in as a surrogate adult was a two way street in their relationship. By the time they'd gotten to the office, they both felt like things were pretty close to normal and Mac felt prepared to confront his father, both as an agent and as the son who'd been repeatedly screwed over by the man. He was already waiting placidly at a table in one of the less formal interrogation rooms when the partners walked in. When he looked up Mac noticed how old he looked. Objectively he knew the man was older than Jack, but unless he was teasing his partner he never really thought of Jack as old. While Mac typically had a healthy respect for the older more experienced people in his life, it somehow diminished the man further in Mac's eyes, although he didn't quite know why.

As he sat, he noticed the greying roots growing in beneath the dyed blond. He realized what it was then. There were cracks in the façade. His father had always presented himself as so together, doing such important work, caring so diligently for his sick wife, and then alone for his son; then there were the weeks of hearing what a brilliant operative he was (mostly from Patty) and what a good man, blah blah. He was clearly a good spy if he'd gotten close enough for the Organization to screw him over, but who could say what motivated him there. And Mac knew his personal life hadn't been the modern version of _The Wonder Years_ people on the outside might have wanted to believe. Although he had to admit, as the tired brown eyes surrounded by dark bruises settled on him, it hadn't been all bad. He'd been a pretty happy kid and his scientist father had doted on him before his mother got sick. Mac swallowed, determined to get some questions answered before the man was moved on to the formal interrogation wing so the investigation could move forward and he would either be released or imprisoned depending on what was found.

"How's …" Mac stopped and cleared his throat, feeling Jack glance at him when his voice caught, but determined to move on like it hadn't happened. "How's your face?"

The man gave him a small smile that obviously pained him. "Hurts like hell. You've got a helluva swing, kid. How's your hand?"

Mac flexed it a couple of times in full view. He'd iced the hell out of it and downed more ibuprofen than was probably wise this morning before showing up. He was pleased with the results at the moment. "Fine, thanks. I'd say I'm sorry for hitting you, but you were always good at knowing when I was lying."

The man squinted then and Mac wasn't sure if it was in response to his words or that his face just hurt that much. Jack glanced at him again and Mac could feel his subtle approval. He chimed in, "Mac's too good a guy to be a good liar. Seeing through it isn't a skill, if you're someone he cares about."

Mac tipped him a half smile. The protective note in Jack's voice was expected, and at the moment, appreciated.

The man nodded. "Angus … I'm sorry, Mac … never lied about much anyway. Unless he got hurt. Then he'd lie to God himself about it. Got worse as he got older. I suppose some of that is my fault." The man shook his head, but there was an expression that could almost be called affectionate on his bruised and swollen face.

Jack snickered. "Some things never change, huh, kid?"

"Shut up, Jack," Mac said, but with no malice.

The man cleared his throat (Mac realized that was how he kept thinking of him but Butler didn't quite feel right, and there was no way he could think of him as Dad). Then he asked calmly, "I think I've answered the same questions about the Organization and Murdoc a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours. Are you in here batting clean-up or has Phoenix decided on a new line of inquiry?"

Mac gave him a hard stare. "How'd you get the limp? Gunshot? Bomb? Bad jump?"

He shook his head. "Arthritis on a grand scale from an old injury I never had properly seen to. Couldn't be slowed down long enough at the time and I managed to live to regret it. It's not the only regret I have, as I'm sure you can imagine."

Mac shifted subtly, thinking for a moment that his shoulder was still bothering the hell out of him and he'd sworn to Steve he'd say something about it when they came back in but he hadn't and he knew he didn't really intend to either. The thought passed quickly and his bright blue eyes took on a cooler tone. "I'm interested in your actions, what you know about the Organization, why the hell they're so interested in me because of you. I'm not particularly interested in your regrets."

"Yes, you are," he challenged. "Or why bother speaking to me yourself? Because _you're_ the most qualified interrogator at Phoenix?"

The question was asked in an almost derisive tone and Mac was more than aware of Jack's whole body tensing in the seat next to him. His voice was low and chilling. Jack was such a goofball most of the time, Mac could sometimes forget the man he'd met in the desert, the man who would drop a target without breaking stride and never mention it again. "Mac asks good questions. Always. But I kind of tend to prefer not to ask. I tend to prefer a subject telling me everything down to how often they've clipped their toenails since middle school just to make me go away. And if I ask, our boss will more than happily reassign me on a temporary basis."

"You seem to forget that I've been working here, too, Agent Dalton. Matilda would never breach protocol like that for you or anyone else. And you should probably remember that the film from this room is reviewed by Oversight."

"You know what, you son of a …"

"Jack," Mac said softly. "Don't."

"But Mac …"

"He's not worth getting yourself in trouble for." This time the man did flinch. "So," Mac began again in a matter-of-fact voice. "I don't have the patience for a long drawn out dance with you. There are things I need to know from you to do my job … but now that I'm here in the room with you, I realize I can't trust anything you say anyway because of my own issues. This was a bad idea. I'll let the Director know to send someone else in."

Mac started to rise. "Wait!" the man said with a hint of desperation. "If I'm not going to see you again … and that is a very real possibility given how Oversight operated in its extrajudicial capacity … I'd like a minute to tell you the things I regret."

Mac paused, and sat back down, eyes darting at Jack, then settling reluctantly on his father. "Go ahead. It's been a long time since I heard any new lies from you."

"Angus, please …"

Jack gave the man a distinctly menacing glare. "You don't get to decide how he feels about this, huh? You get that, right? The one who did the leavin' doesn't get to decide."

"I'm sorry. You're right, of course." Instead of looking at Mac, he now looked down at the table. "I'm sorry your mother never knew who I really was and you I … I shared the parts I thought were important, but I didn't … I never should've … You must understand, must have thought about …"

"I used to," Mac said, taking in the slumped shoulders and defeated expression. "Lately I've been thinking about it more seriously, and I guess this just confirms my line of thinking. If I get involved it will have to be with someone who's at least read in to the life."

His father glanced up, "You'd still have to lie to your children, just like I …"

"No," Mac said very firmly. Jack looked right at him then. "If I find someone I want to spend my life with, that person will know me. And if we ever have children, I'll retire. I think I'd be a pretty good science teacher. Like Mom."

"Teaching requires a certain …"

"I've nearly gotten my Bachelor's degree now. It's not at all challenging, just hoops to jump through. Another month should do it. I'm not married to this life. Family is more important." At that last his voice was almost fierce.

Jack nudged his partner to get him back in the moment. "You're really finishing school, bud? Why didn't you say somethin'?"

Mac shrugged. "Frankie set it up for me … an online thing so I don't have to sit in class … I just … If I tanked I didn't want anybody to know about it."

Jack chuckled. "Like your ginormous brain was gonna fail you now." He patted Mac on the shoulder just like the man across the table wasn't staring daggers at him. "I'm proud of you, man. And I'm glad you're keeping your options open."

Mac shrugged again and then looked seriously at his father. "This case has reminded me that I need to keep my priorities straight." He took a breath that Jack noticed was a little shaky, but he didn't think it would have been apparent to anyone else. "What else? What else do you regret that you think I'll understand?"

"I regret lying to you about how sick your mom was … You were just so young, I didn't think you'd understand."

Mac's face was almost blank.

"I regret asking you to … to donate bone marrow. That was too much pressure to put on a child. But I was blind to it, thinking I could lose her, that _we_ could lose her."

Mac's forehead creased. "Do you regret lying about what it would be like to do that? Because it was so bad I blocked it the hell out for better than twenty years!"

"I knew if I told you, you'd never have even tried."

"No," Mac shook his head then, and Jack didn't like how shiny his partner's eyes had gotten. He thought it would be bad for Mac to lose it in front of his dad after how hard he'd worked on keeping it together. "That's an excuse and the worst kind of lie. I would have done anything for her, for either of you, and I have never once backed down from helping someone else because it might not work out well for me. You know that. But you lied and I was terrified. I went ahead and did it anyway, but I've never been so scared. Not even now, years later … some of the things I've done would turn your hair white and I don't care how good you were or you think you are." Mac's voice was rising, but Jack didn't want to interrupt. "That's the lie that explains all the others. You've always lied to get what you want … to protect yourself. Even when you left, you didn't do it because you were afraid of something happening to me for my own sake … you were afraid that they could use me to get to you."

The devastated look on the man's face told both agents that Mac had gotten to the core of his motivation. Mac got up and pushed away from the table. "And that's what you're still afraid of. That's why you wanted to come in now. You're afraid of Murdoc and you're afraid of what he might do now that he's sure of our connection."

Mac's father managed to look him in the eyes, tears of his sudden crushing sense of failure and in adequacy were standing there, but neither man acknowledged them. He nodded though, and they fell. "I suppose you're right. You often are. You've always been so bright."

Mac's jaw clenched and unclenched. "I know how we're going to catch him." Jack stood too as Mac gave his father another hard look. "You're part of this until the end." Then he looked at Jack, tipped his chin at his father. "I need to talk to Matty. Would you hand him off to Holding for now?"

Jack nodded, face lined with concern. He wanted to ask after him, but wouldn't do so in front of the kid's father. "You bet, bud."

Mac left then and Jack hauled the older man to his feet. "C'mon. You better go get some rest. If Mac's layin' on an op things are bound to get real exciting and if he wants you in you better make damn sure that you're useful."

The man just nodded and limped toward the door. "He's twenty-eight. He shouldn't be in charge of operations. He's reckless. It's a wonder either of you is still alive."

Jack opened the door with a grin. "Now, see, you just reminded me of somethin' I've been wantin' to do for the longest time."

Jack telegraphed a little and was gratified when the man flinched. "The cameras, Dalton!"

Jack tipped a wink. "They turn off when the door opens."

And without another word Jack let him have it. Hard. But in the stomach so he didn't have a sore hand to match his partner's. After he'd thrown up into the garbage can a couple of times, Mac's father righted himself and met Jack's eyes. "I earned that, and more. I'm sorry. I spoke from cowardice I suppose. But Mac is wrong about one thing."

Jack tilted his head with his question, "What's that?"

"It's not just myself I'm concerned with. I don't want him hurt any more by my mistakes. He looks just like her you know. And I've never been the father he deserved."

Jack interrupted then. "You damn sure haven't."

"But I promised … I promised his mother that I'd do my best for him. After she died, he didn't really have family, not to call his own, not really. Even Harry didn't understand him, though he tried. But it seems Mac's found a family after all. I need to end the things I set in motion in his life so he can enjoy it."

Jack gave him a short respectful nod before leading him down the hall to hand him off to Security. Mac wasn't talking with Matty when Jack went to her office. She hadn't seen him, she said. Jack wanted to panic, just a little, but he sensibly went to Mac's office first and found the door closed. Not quite sure what he might find, he tapped on the door quietly. A soft, "Who is it?" immediately followed and when he answered Mac called out, "Come in."

Unsurprisingly Mac was sitting on the couch in his office. There was a box of tissues off to the side and he'd clearly come back here to have a good cry, what with the red eyes that made the blue look like that weird movie with the worms and the spice and the underground people that Mac made Jack watch every once in a while, and the sniffle in his voice when he spoke. "How's your hand?"

"What? My hand's fine, bud … I …"

Mac shook his head and gave a small smile. "You hit him. Don't even pretend you didn't do it."

Jack sat down next to him. "Well, now, I am all for honestly about who I punched, brother, and as usual, you are correct. I got him just as hard as I could. In the gut. I had pins in my punchin' hand not two months ago. I don't want to go bein' reckless with it."

"Because you know Mel's on duty today."

Jack gave him a sheepish grin. "Yeah well, I've told you before you're a braver man than I am."

He snickered, then Mac looked at his partner very seriously. "Thanks, Jack."

He knew how Mac meant it, in the 'for everything' way two people who regularly risked their lives together often did. Instead of brushing it off, Jack just nodded. "Anytime." Then he asked, "Have you talked to Matty?"

Mac shook his head. "I wanted to wait for you." He got up, blew his nose again, and then used the hand sanitizer he kept on the edge of his desk. "I think this plan is just crazy enough to trap a madman."

Jack grinned and rose as well, ready to follow Mac out of his office. "Lead the way, brother. Crazy is my middle name."

Mac managed a real grin this time. "And all this time you've been telling me it's Wyatt."

"Well, the Wyatt's just so people'll know I'm always ready to cowboy up!"

"Believe me, Jack; we all know it without the name."

As they got on the elevator together, Jack wondered briefly if he should tell Mac what his father had said, but, he wisely decided that it should be between the two of them and if the man never had the guts to tell this fine young man the way he felt, that was his loss. For his own part, Jack told the kid every day, and made sure every single member of their strange little patchwork family did the same.


	13. Chapter 13

Another complicated set up meant what felt to the team like another load of unproductive downtime. Although the underlying tension was wearing on everyone's nerves, although Mac refused to acknowledge it and the rest of them were doing their best to conceal it so as to not add to his burden. Not wanting Bozer back in Murdoc's line of fire, they had staged a huge fight between him and Mac in front of their house with Beth showing up to take an apparently furious and hurt Bozer along with half his worldly possessions away from a fuming Mac. Mac thought Bozer had enjoyed himself a little too much and wondered if his friend's desire to be behind the camera really came from a secret desire to be in front of it. Since Boze and Beth were off to a Phoenix safe house in a different time zone with their own security detail, Mac would have to wait until the op was over to tease his friend about it.

Jack assumed what had become, more and more, over the last few months a Bozer spent more and more time out of the house, his usual position as Mac's roommate, this time with staging that indicated Mac's need for support. Mac had been taken off the duty roster again and was only ever seen outside wearing a restrictive brace and elaborate sling that looked like it had its own pulley system. This time instead of actually having to jump through hoops and put on a show, Mac, Steve, and Matty had just sat together and fudged paperwork that made it look like Mac's shoulder injury and his refusal to address it had resulted in possibly career ending problems that could only potentially be addressed through intensive intervention that he was, (predictably, Matty had smirked) refusing to consider at the moment. That explained Steve's frequent visits to Mac's house. Steve regularly congratulated himself on not pointing out to Mac that the op could be prophetic if he didn't admit it was still bothering him soon. That was a fish he would fry after this stuff with Mac's dad and Murdoc were in the rearview. Matty had assigned an on-the-books security detail to handle physical and technical aspects of Mac's safety which explained Todd and Riley hanging around. The less obvious Phoenix team was (hopefully) unobservable to Murdoc and the Organization.

Marc Butler, who had openly resumed the identity of James MacGyver (an aspect of the op that had Mac pacing the hallways at Phoenix more than once) had been held in the Interrogation wing at Phoenix for over a week, stood in front of the Oversight board, and was then released on his own recognizance, with the documented understanding that he was not permitted to leave the state of California until he was completely cleared of wrongdoing by Phoenix. He moved back onto his house boat with no fanfare and next to no help. His security detail was completely off the books other than a large bald man who went by the name X (as in 'gon give it to ya') and nothing else. There were several staged overtures on his part at Mac's front door, which Mac did not come out into the open for. These were handled by Jack. Matty didn't like it, said it could call the credibility of the op into question with the Organization, but Mac had been stubborn, saying he knew what the op required and it didn't need him talking to the man every day for a week to accomplish. It was a my-way-or-the-highway situation and for once, Matty capitulated. Finally, the moment they'd been waiting for arrived when James called the house several weeks into the new pattern and in a very strained conversation invited Mac to take the boat up the coast with him and they could harbor up north, maybe visit Harry's cabin, see if they couldn't reconcile somewhat. Following the prepared script, Mac had reluctantly agreed. The team was pretty pleased with his performance, but when he hung up the phone he leaned on the counter for a long minute and then ran his hands over his eyes before he turned to the rest of the team, though he now leaned his back against the counter.

He tipped his chin at Riley, "You get anything?"

She glanced up from her laptop, where she was still working. "Yeah. Definitely a third party on the call in addition to Phoenix. Maybe more than one. It looks really similar to what they were doing before the Architect's program shut them down. I'm seeing if I can pin down the signals now. If I do, I'll let everyone know ASAP."

He nodded, then checked a text. "Matty's on it too, and she's setting the pieces in motion for transport in case they've decided to hit while we're on the move. My money's on the cabin though."

Jack nodded, "Yeah, knowing what we know now about your dad renting the place under an assumed name a bunch of times makes Murdoc's comment about the man's fishing habits seem almost like bait." The Jack snickered, unable to stop himself. "Pun unintended, buddy I swear. But damned if it wasn't a good one."

"It was alright," Mac forced a little smile. Jack was trying so hard to make all this normal, he deserved some reciprocation, Mac thought. "Phoenix is working on the cabin too, and on getting the rest of the team up there on the down low as back up." He glanced at Todd, Steve, and Riley. "Plan is for you guys to crash here like you're helping me get ready and then escorting me to the boat and following as Team Phoenix. It's convenient that we established the need for a detail. But it does mean he may target you guys first so please be careful."

"Always, Mac," Riley said in the most reassuring voice she had. Mac looked like he needed it.

Mac glanced at Jack. "You know I'm happy the plan makes it easy for us to stick together up until we get to the cabin, I'm worried about you too, man. Murdoc already hates you."

"Nice to know the feeling's mutual, bud. I get a shot this time, I won't hesitate."

Mac nodded, looking around with an anxious unease he couldn't properly conceal. Then he glanced at the clock. "I know it's early but I'm gonna crash."

Jack narrowed his eyes at him, "What about dinner?"

Mac shook his head and started for his bedroom. "I'm not … Jack, seriously, I can't tonight."

Jack took a few long strides toward his partner and, careless of the fact that there was a roomful of people, pulled him into a brief hug. "That's okay, I think I should adult for you for a little while anyway."

Mac chuckled and disengaged from the hug and just disappeared into his room without saying anything else. The rest of the team went about their nightly routine and read the newest briefing materials Matty had sent through a quadruple routed encryption. No one heard from Mac all night, and when the sun rose and it was time to go board _Land's End_ Mac secured his sling, looped his duffle over the other shoulder, and headed out to the company SUV with only minimal polite conversation. Riley raised her eyes at Jack and Steve both. "Dude, neither one of you had to remind him to put that stupid sling on to keep his cover story this morning."

Steve smiled. "He ought to be wearing it anyway. I'm positive he's torn something."

Jack shook his head, looking at them both very seriously before heading out to drive Mac, which would leave the rest of the team to their own vehicle. "Think about it, you guys, he's been pretending that doesn't still hurt for weeks and weeks. Just like he pretends all his emotional garbage is no big deal and he can box it up and not deal with it. I think the emotional stuff is too big for him to mentally juggle that and the physical stuff at the moment. What you see out there right now, ladies and gentleman, is a man in real pain." Jack shouldered his own duffle and headed out, but as he headed out the door he added, "It's up to us to ease that burden at the moment because once this op is over, he's going to have to deal with all of it."

Jack closed the door then, but Riley and Steve just stood there for a full minute realizing the truth of Jack's words before they started moving around to grab their own gear.


	14. Chapter 14

Mac spoke very little on the ride to the marina and Jack didn't push. He could feel the tension coming off this partner in waves. He did try passing him a handful of paperclips which Mac mostly just twisted around a pen in his pocket, littering the car with little spirals rather than his typical little pieces of art. It was too difficult to do much else with them one handed. Then Mac, who seemed to realize fidgeting might help but also realizing the prop sling was going to be infuriating this morning, got out the cube Riley had given him months ago and promptly managed to break it, swearing under his breath and stuffing it back into his pocket with an irritated sigh. When they got to _Land's End_ Jack was unsurprised to find Mac's father nearly as tense and subdued as his partner. As soon as the door was closed Mac looked around, ensuring all the curtains were closed, and quickly, almost angrily, took off the sling, and flopped down into the nearest chair massaging his neck where it had been pulling. He gave a frustrated sigh.

James sat down in a chair as carefully distant from his son as he could on the smallish craft and began tentatively, "Can I get you anything while we wait for the other crew?"

Mac shook his head, "No, thanks …" he trailed off awkwardly for a second, looking frustrated and somewhat confused. "I'm fine."

James frowned, wondering what the issue was. So far in their meetings Mac had not been particularly awkward or laconic (although to be fair most of the meetings had been run by Director Webber and she had been more than happy to do most of the talking). Jack shook his head. How could this man, arguably one of the best operatives in the world if he could infiltrate and then evade the Organization, not see what was going on here? While Jack's psych education background revolved around the criminal mind, he knew the basics, and his years of working through his own issues with Sissy gave him a better than average grasp of what was going on. His PhD in Angus MacGyver probably didn't hurt; years of keeping the kid alive allowed him to know him probably better than anyone else ever had. "He doesn't know what to call you," Jack said bluntly.

Mac glanced at him, and then everywhere but at him or James and found himself looking at his hands.

James's brow furrowed. "I'm sorry?"

Jack rolled his eyes, letting the man see how dense Jack found him to be at the moment. "You're not Butler because even though we knew you that way, it's fake and we're in _your_ living room and you've started going by your real name again. And Mac is too polite to just assume he can call you by your first name, not to mention that MacGyver is _him_ so calling you that is weird …. You getting this?"

He swallowed at the unspoken implication that he'd lost the privilege to be 'Dad' a long time ago and nodded. "Well, Patricia always calls me James … My other friends called me Jim, back when I was so fortunate as to have some. Either of those is fine with me." He paused. "If you're comfortable with them … Mac."

Mac looked up, his face as serious as it ever got and Jack thought it was the look Mac had when he encountered a bomb he couldn't stop. He met his father's eye then and offered, "I'll call you Jim. I hope maybe we can be friends." He sighed quietly. "We've got too much history to not at least try for that."

A little more awkward conversation and they were finally blessedly interrupted by the signal that their security detail had boarded their own vessel and was ready to go. James had gone to the cabin to get them out onto open water where he could put on the GPS autopilot. As soon as he was out of the room Jack moved to the chair closest to Mac. "How you holdin' up, bud?"

"I'm okay, Jack." Jack cleared his throat significantly. "Maybe not like okay-okay, but you know. I meant it when I told him I'd like to be friends. I'm not there yet, but if I've learned anything from you and Sissy, it's that we never know where we're capable of going …"

Jack finished a frequent Sissy-ism with a smile, "Unless we let go of expectation and try. Yeah." Jack phone beeped with an alert of some kind. "Ah, hell, my app says we're not headed into the nicest weather up Santa Barbara way."

"That'll be fun to dock in this afternoon," Mac observed. Then he got out his phone. When he saw Jack's questioning look he said, "I'm texting Ri that she might want to take something. I'm sure Steve brought stuff along. Remember how seasick she got when we were going in to Chechnya?"

Jack chuckled. "Yeah, I'm sure she'll appreciate the heads up; she was one unhappy camper."

Mac glanced at his phone and laughed, so Jack's eyebrows went up. It was a nice natural Mac laugh. "I just got a bunch of puke emojis in return for the warning and a very emphatic text about how this is not allowed to be anything like Chechnya."

"I can't say I disagree with our girl there, Mac. You junkin' the plan and gettin' yourself shot …"

"Since we only have a sort-of plan this time, I'm sure I'll be much more in my element," he joked.

They were still swapping humorous barbs about the mission when Jim came back into the room. He ventured a tentative smile. "Sorry it took so long to get us into open water. It's been a while since I've actually piloted this damned thing. Was my navigation so bad that you're laughing at me or so good that you're relaxed enough to be laughing at something else?"

Mac glanced up and actually gave the man a smile. "Chechnya," he offered by way of explanation. "You read the mission report, of course."

Jim's face became a little more serious. "I did. Going off script like you did there not only got you hurt, it nearly got you in trouble with Oversight. Matilda's personal, shall we say, encouragement to just couch it as humanitarian aid was all that saved you boys from censure, you know."

Mac and Jack both shrugged, still chuckling a little. "Wouldn't be the first time," Jack grinned.

"Guarantee it won't be the last," Mac laughed, shaking his head. He saw Jim's expression was still a little serious. "You're not in Oversight anymore. Don't be a killjoy."

Jim felt a small smile play on his lips. He could hear a much younger version of Mac saying something very similar when he wanted to test the dumpster scavenged go-kart he'd built on the long hill near his grandfather's house. Much like the mission in Chechnya, it had resulted in a trip to the hospital, and a young man who insisted on leaving well before he should have. "Old habits die hard, I'm afraid." He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure I'm up for the cowboy version of your missions since I already have enough grey hair from my own, why don't you tell Jack and me about the degree you've been working on."

Mac nodded agreeably and launched into the description of the program his advisor and primary professor, one Dr. Roselyn Franklin Mallory, had designed in collaboration with her (admittedly favorite) student, so that in the spring Mac would walk away with a BS in Applied Sciences. He grinned when he said it was like printing 'A little of this, a little of that' on his diploma, but the academic board and the dean had approved it. A few courses here and there, if he wanted, and it wouldn't be hard to get credentialed to teach. Jack was looking at him, somewhere in between smiling and frowning, and asked, "You've really thought about teaching, huh?"

Mac shrugged with a self-deprecating smile. "A little. Ever since we went to Mission City and I met Valerie and talked with Mr. Ericson, started emailing with both of them … I thought about it a lot while Becca and I were … She mentioned wanting a big family like her sister's once and I …"

When Mac trailed off Jack put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry the whole Nikki mission messed all that up for you, brother."

Mac shrugged. "It's okay. We weren't really serious … it just got me thinking is all."

The boat lurched a little and all three men instinctively reached out to grab hold of something in case it worsened. It didn't, but Jim got to his feet and excused himself to go take the boat off autopilot and finish the day's trip manually, saying being nose to the weather might get a little colorful. Jack had the look that said he was ready to get Mac to try and open up a little and Mac was firmly against that at the moment. He said he was going to head out onto the deck while the weather still allowed it. He contemplated not wearing the sling since he couldn't imagine anyone being close enough for that level of surveillance, but then put it on anyway when Jack suggested it was a good move 'just in case'.

Through the rest of the evening and most of the trip Mac kept mostly to himself. He came to the table and ate with Jim, Jack, and X, making perfectly reasonable conversation, but if things started to get more personal again, he would find something else he needed to be doing, like disappearing below deck to tinker with the motor, or work on the water softener. Jack noticed it, of course, and after a few hours so did Jim. On another of Mac's walks out on deck with X, Jim mentioned it, saying he knew this must be difficult, and asking, since Jack knew him best, if he thought the kid was okay.

Jack had nodded thoughtfully. "It took years for Mac to really open up to me. A lot of the whole open and honest thing is from the last year or so. Before that a lot of our friendship was built on some drunken (or pain medication) induced confessions or things neither one of us ever planned on talking about that came out in some pretty dire circumstances. And hell, me and Mac, we've saved each other's lives so many damned times that I've lost count now." He paused, then decided what he was thinking needed saying. "You hurt him; he's not going to get over than overnight, man."

"You mean leaving?"

Jack shook his head. If the guy didn't know, Jack couldn't explain it. "I mean a lotta things. Give him time. Do your part on this mission. Show him he can trust you; that you'll hold up your side. That'll go a long way to getting to 'friends', which I'm here to tell you is more than plenty when the friend in question has a heart like Mac's."

After that conversation, James sat in the living room, long after the other men retired to their bunks in the guest rooms.

0-0-0

The team's arrival at the cabin in Humboldt County was uneventful. The cabin was, as anticipated, in good repair and freshly cleaned by the caretaker Mac employed to oversee his grandfather's estate. He hadn't made it up this way in years and anyone who knew him could see that there was an element of bittersweetness to his return. The smaller cabin was more than adequate for the small 'security' team that accompanied them and Jack and X were more than agreeable about sharing the third bedroom in the main house. A few nights of campfires down by the small trout pond and walks through the surreal beauty of the redwoods made all of them almost forget that this was a mission and not a pleasure trip. Things seemed to ease a little bit between Mac and Jim as well, with both of them laughing at Jack's incessant Endor references and _Return of the Jedi_ movie quotes and Mac barely managing to fold his arms and look annoyed when Jack referred to him as Young Skywalker.

They had set a fourteen day limit on trying to bait Murdoc into the open and the two weeks slipped almost idly by. Matty had communicated via encrypted email with Riley that the assassin they'd caught using one of James's known aliases had been caught and was currently undergoing intensive interrogation but it seemed unlikely he knew anything about Murdoc or how the Organization planned to use him. They decided to give this the whole fourteen days, but after that they would head home, just like their vacation was over as planned and everyone would get back to business as usual, including James who had been offered a technical position at Phoenix in either of its two main offices if he should chose to continue to help trying to bring down the organization. He knew better than to try to argue for a field position. His knee was just too far gone. When he said so he looked very pointedly at Mac who was sitting by the fire absently massaging his shoulder. He received the anticipated nearly adolescent glare in return and Jack had cracked up, saying he kind of liked not being the only one to get that particular dirty look around there.

On the twelfth night the team, including Jack had done a sweep of the area including a particularly thorough satellite analysis by Riley and still found nothing remarkable. They had set their usual motion sensors and digital surveillance up for the night and retired to their small cabin, leaving Mac, Jim, Jack, and X sitting around the fire. Mac was stirring the dwindling flames around with a stick trying to get the hot enough to burn off faster when Jim yawned mightily. Everyone looked his way and he laughed lightly. "Don't pick on the old man. This is past my bedtime. And I can't remember when I've been this relaxed on a mission. I probably shouldn't say this, but much as I wish we could've gotten Murdoc out here together, I'm glad we've just had this time."

Mac looked down into the fire for a minute, then back at his father. "I am, too, Jim."

When he said it, for the first time, the friendship both of them hoped for had begun, had at least around the edges, to creep into his tone. He risked a pat on Mac's shoulder as he started to get to his feet. His knee buckled on him and Mac scrambled up quickly to give him a hand. "Thanks, Mac," he said almost absently. "I always know when I'm tired. Damned thing cuts out on me every time. I'm going to head in and get some sleep. We'll have to start packing up for the trip back to the boat sometime tomorrow and I don't want to gimp around uselessly while you guys do all the work."

X followed him after a minute of checking in with Jack about them staying down by the fire on their own. Mac settled down next to Jack on the ground and started poking the fire again. It was a homey feeling, something that always made him feel grounded. At first he thought it was because this reminded him of being at the fire pit with Jack back in LA and then he realized it had its own good memories attached to it, memories that he was ready to have, even if they still cut a little. "How ya doin' buddy?" Jack asked, in the joking tone often reserved for Mac when he woke up to discover himself in another hospital bed; the one that invited Mac to tell him to fuck off if he wanted.

Mac just glanced at him with a small smile. Then he nodded slowly. "I'm good. I think anyway." Then he shrugged. "It's been so long since I've felt anything other than angry or disappointed about him … I don't know if good is actually the right word. But if I'm not, I will be."

Jack gave him his usual reassuring squinty eyed nod (that Mac was convinced Jack thought made him look like a cowboy) and stretched. Mid-stretch he was overcome with his own colossal yawn. "Sorry, brother, all this early rising and time outside is kicking my ass. I'm a city boy now."

Mac grinned. "Old fart, more like it." Jack punched him lightly on the arm (the one that didn't still secretly hurt, he thought to himself). Mac poked the fire again and offered, "Why don't you head in, Jack? I'll put the fire out and be up in a few."

Jack frowned. "You shouldn't stay out here all on your own, bud."

Mac grinned and shook his head. "Uh oh, Papa Jack is back again." He gave Jack his own affectionate punch, maybe not quite as light a one as his partner had used. "You're not actually my security detail and I don't actually need this sling. I can take care of my own six for a few minutes. Besides you guys already did a sweep."

Jack started to stand. "I guess; if you're sure." The last thing he wanted to do was crowd Mac when he seemed to be naturally moving into a good headspace about all this on his own.

"Go on," Mac tipped his chin toward the path. The solar lights disappeared into the woods and the cabin was just out of sight. It wasn't very far even in the pitch dark, and there was a bright nearly full moon in tonight's cloudless sky to illuminate the way even after the fire was out. "If you're still awake when I get up there, we can probably go a little 'off-duty' and have a beer once we're locked up for the night. I'd watch _Jedi_ with you again if you want."

Jack laid a hand on his friend's shoulder before walking away, but he didn't say anything else. Sometimes you didn't need to say what you were thinking. Sometimes you were with someone who already knew. Mac watched Jack disappear up the path and waited until he figured Jack was at the cabin before he started putting out the fire with the water and dirt they had lugged to the pit for that very purpose. It was quiet in the forest, not eerily or anything, just Mac was so used to LA he realized how much he'd been missing coming out here.

It was darker than Mac expected it to be so he got out his phone and turned on the flashlight app. There were a couple of big roots across the path and he didn't want to trip. He still caught his toe on one and nearly went sprawling. He gave a frustrated huff and pulled of the sling, tossing it on the ground in his frustration. He almost bent to pick it up, feeling the guilty expression on his face, and then he changed his mind. It was a prop for the mission, and the mission was basically over. Damned if he was ever going to play that particular card again either. He left it right where it had fallen and moved much more easily and gracefully the rest of the way.

When he got there the cabin was dark. Jack must've really been tired to flake out on beer and _Star Wars_. Mac let himself in, not bothering about the kitchen light, thinking maybe the old folks were tired but he was still planning on indulging in both the fermented barley and the sci-fi, so he opened the fridge. The light didn't come on. He paused and realized that the motor wasn't running either. No power. Using his flashlight, Mac turned slowly, expecting someone (let's face it, Murdoc) to be right behind him. Instead there was just the dark and empty kitchen. He closed the refrigerator and took a step toward the middle of the room, trying to decide what to do first. He saw a piece of gleaming white paper sitting on the dark wood of the table in the bluish light of his phone.

He stepped closer to read it.

 _Hello Angus,_

 _Your daddies miss you already._

 _The game, as the Great Detective might say, is afoot._

 _I'll see you soon, in the last place you'd hope for._

 _Come alone._

 _M_

Despite a racing heart and breath that wanted to come in gulps, Mac forced himself to remain calm, to control his breathing. He dialed Riley and she picked up immediately. "Mac?"

The first words he thought of, his mental priority, were what found their way out of his mouth.

"Murdoc's got Jack."


	15. Chapter 15

After Mac contact the rest of the team, he methodically began to go over the house. Fortunately the power had not been cut; Murdoc and just thrown the breaker. So Mac had light again after only a few minutes. Once the place was illuminated again, the signs of struggle were readily apparent. There was more than a little blood in the hallway. It wasn't a fatal amount by any stretch, but someone was badly hurt. Mac ran his hand through his hair and swallowed hard. _It could be Murdoc's blood_ , he told himself. The assassin had gone after three trained operatives, even if one of them did have a bum knee. _Three._ Mac suddenly wondered what had become of Jim's Phoenix assigned body guard. A muffled sound from one of the bedrooms quickly got his attention. He found the bodyguard face down on the floor. There was more blood in here, but it didn't seem to belong to the large man lying unconscious here. Mac rolled him over carefully, found his pulse and respiration slightly slow, but not frighteningly. He tried rousing him, lightly slapping his cheeks and calling his real name. "Jason! Come on man, wake up ... Eccleston, I'm serious ... Damnit, X!"

He was answered by a slight snore. The dart sticking out of the man's thigh probably explained that and how Murdoc had gotten the drop on one of Phoenix's best personal security guys. He heard the rest of the team enter through the cabin's back door and he called out for the medic. He got up and out of the way as Steve came through the door. Mac helpfully supplied, "The blood's not his. He doesn't appear injured. Just drugged."

Once his eyes were focused on the blood again, Mac felt his pulse pick up again. Combined with the blood in the hallway, if it was all from the same person they were probably in a bad way. He stepped out into the hall and found Riley eyeing the pooled blood with the same look of horror he wanted to be wearing. He got close enough to put a hand on her arm and when she looked into his face her eyes were swimming with tears. "Hey … We're going to find them, Ri. We will. Okay?"

"But Murdoc …"

"Thinks he's a lot smarter than he is," Mac said with determination, his brain slipping out of friend mode and into practiced precise field agent territory. "We'll get him, Ri." She was back to staring at the blood, shaking a little. Mac led her into the nearby kitchen and sat down at the table with her. After she collected herself for a minute, he asked her what she could get for satellite images of the area. She said because it was dark there probably wasn't much, but she'd see what she could do. She got out her rig and her fingers started flying over the keyboard and as she began to focus on her work her expression returned to one of normal concentration and the tension in her body became that of focus rather than fear.

Todd had already notified Matty and the larger team was on its way from the staging area near the marina, but he didn't want to wait for them if they didn't have to. He looked at Mac and said, "Obviously they didn't go without a fight. How long since you last saw Jack?"

"I … not long. Jim headed up here with X probably forty minutes or so ago … but I was only fifteen minutes or so behind Jack, I think. Maybe I stared at the fire longer than I thought, but it can't have been long."

"Good. How sure are we that this is a Murdoc situation?"

Mac remembered the note, which he had left over on the counter when he went to get the lights back on. Needing to do something, Mac got up and got it, read it again and handed it to Todd before sitting back down next to Riley. Todd looked at it frowning. God he hated this guy. Then, more out of habit than anything else, he flipped the paper over and found additional writing in very faint pencil. He put it down on the table in front of Mac under the bright kitchen overhead.

"I don't like this any better than I did the other side," Todd observed. His voice had the sound Mac associated with either him or Jack getting itchy trigger fingers. For a change, he thought he'd be perfectly happy to see one of them shoot Murdoc today. He thought that if the opportunity presented itself he'd pick up a gun and pull the trigger himself if the psycho had truly harmed Jack … or Jim for that matter. Then he could hear Murdoc's voice, hissing in his ear, slithering into the dark places of his mind, saying in his prim voice, " _You see, Angus, we are very much alike. And now I know what it takes to show that to you._ "

Mac shuddered like someone had dropped an ice cube down his back and shoved all of those thoughts away so he could focus on the note in front of him.

 _Where oh where should our hero go?_

 _Ask the muscle when he wakes up._

 _Or figure it out for yourself._

 _They really don't have a lot of time, Angus._

 _And your friend is in for a long nap._

 _Tic toc._

 _M_

"So he must've told X where he was taking them before he knocked him out. It would be nice to know who's injured and how badly if he knows, too." Steve was currently leaning in the doorway waiting for the ambulance he'd called for the unconscious guard to arrive so he could go out and lead the EMT's inside and Mac hazarded the question, "How long do you think he'll be out?"

Steve shook his head. "Depends on what was in it. From the symptoms, I'm guessing maybe an opiate, which given his size should clear out reasonably quickly …" Mac looked almost hopeful, but Steve continued. "I'm guessing we're not that lucky though. We should probably assume worst case in terms of it clearing his system and if it's something like diazepam it could be tomorrow before he really comes around." He paused, his own worry creeping past the surgeon's calm he was usually so good at keeping in place. "Do you have any idea where he might have taken them?"

Mac scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair in pure frustration and then rested his head against the flats of his hands, pressing them into his eyes, trying to stop thinking about the pools of blood in the hallway and the back bedroom, and just figure out what Murdoc was trying to lead him to. Murdoc knew so much about him. And he couldn't have gone far if he'd left the note intending for Mac to set out after him

 _The last place I'd hope for … Sherlock reference …_ "No, no way would he know about that," Mac mumbled aloud.

Riley looked up, "Know about what?"

Mac was spared telling his story by the arrival of the ambulance and the ensuing orderly chaos that was involved in transporting the large unconscious guard to the nearest hospital. Steve had hedged that he could probably just sleep it off here, but his respiration was slower than he was comfortable with, so this was a much better solution. However, it didn't take long. The short interruption did allow Mac to order his thoughts. Then the door closed behind the last EMT and just his team members remained, Mac began, "The cliffs, out in Lost Coast. There's a spot where all the local kids say there's a cave with pirate treasure, but you have to climb down these cliffs."

Mac got a far off look on his face so Riley prompted, "You think he took Jack there?"

Mac nodded slowly. "Maybe. That's the only place close by I have any bad memories of around here."

"Where is it exactly?" Riley had her laptop out again.

Mac shook his head. "I don't know an address or anything. I was a kid the last time I was there …" Mac trailed off for a minute, then Riley saw a flush come into his cheeks. "You can probably get the location if you can find the local newspaper's archive. You'll know it when you see it. It was … July 2004 … I think … Oh, damn it. That's how he knows. He must've seen the paper."

Mac got quiet again as Riley clicked away on her computer. Her hand went to her mouth and then she looked at Mac with an expression of complete understanding. "Oh, Mac. How did it happen?"

The other guys got up and stood behind Riley to look at the article from Mac's past. It was about what you'd expect: skinny kid in a knee brace, eyes the size of saucers on a ledge with rescue workers clearly trying to convince him to move enough to get into the harness they had. The photo from above showed the sheer drop that had to be about a hundred feet. "Damn, dude," Todd said. Steve just shook his head and patted Mac on the shoulder as he sat back down.

"I … um …" Mac cleared his throat. "My grandfather brought me out to this cabin a lot after my dad left. We'd had a lot of good family stuff happen out here and he seemed to think it might help me when I was … as he put it, 'struggling'. I'd busted up my knee pretty badly on my skateboard and I didn't tell him. That was after probably my worst year at school, but I thought the summer was good because Bozer and I had gotten to be best friends and I was hanging out at his house a lot … and I felt like I had … not family exactly, but something that made me happy more often than it didn't again."

Riley gave a small smile. "When you've got him as a friend, Bozer is like that."

"Anyhow, Boze's mom noticed me limping and ratted me out. And she's a doctor, so it's not like I could even pretend she didn't know what she was talking about … Anyway, I needed surgery. Not anything major, it was no big deal, but I made it into a huge deal." Mac blushed again at the memory of the teenaged tantrum he'd thrown. "I was a jackass about it for a week after, so Gramps brought me out here; thought it might chill me out a little. And it did. Until I caught him on the phone with my father, telling him about the whole … about everything and ..."

Riley was looking at her laptop again, working on something, but she prodded, "You felt like he betrayed your trust."

Mac nodded. That was it exactly. "I also was sick of everyone acting like I needed a nanny just because my mom died. So when he went into town to buy some groceries I called up a kid I knew and he got his big brother to drive us out to the cliffs. He'd been trying to get me to go hunting for the pirate cave for years, but I wouldn't for … reasons that should be really obvious now that you've seen the picture. But I decided I was going to do it, just to spite my grandfather who'd been telling me it was 'too dangerous anyway' for ages. So I ditched my crutches climbed over the guardrail and followed my friend Bill over the edge." He paused again, and then forced himself to go on. "We got about thirty feet down before I froze. I looked down and I couldn't even breath. Bill climbed back out and got somebody to call the police. Search and Rescue had to come pry me off that outcropping. I hurt my knee again too and wound up spending an extra month in a brace because of it. Anyway, once it was all over, me and Gramps had a huge fight. I wouldn't have been mad about him chewing me out for being an idiot, but I was still so pissed that he talked to my father behind my back … After that summer I went to live with the Bozers." He let out a long slow breath that was more a sign than anything else. "I think about that cliff and suddenly I'm fourteen years old and I can't move or breath or think. And the bastard knows it. He's read my file, obsessively researched my life … I'm sure that's what the note means."

Mac massaged his forehead and closed his eyes for a minute when Riley said, "I've found it!" and they sprung back open.

She spun her laptop so they could see. It was a satellite image of the area (Mac could see the coordinates in the lower portion of the screen) that had been acquired not five minutes ago. The cliffs were well lit by the moon as well as what looked like a bonfire in a little pull off near the road. It was so bright Mac could see the little outcropping of rock he'd been pulled from all those years ago and it made his stomach drop unpleasantly. In front of the bonfire was the silhouette of a man. It didn't take a genius to come to the conclusion all of them did, although the genius was the one who got their first. He was right.

"Murdoc."


	16. Chapter 16

Mac maneuvered into the pull off slowly. "When I find them," he said with confidence he didn't particularly feel, "what's the ETA for emergency services?"

Steve's voice answered in his earpiece, "Roughly seven minutes from the staging area to you. Say the word, and we'll be there."

Todd interjected, "We could be there with you, man." It was clear he was itching to get his hands on Murdoc, too.

"I'd give anything to not be going into this alone," Mac said, both to acknowledge his friend's desire to help and because it was the honest truth. "But we don't know what he has set up. And we know he'll kill them without a second thought if he doesn't think we're playing by the rules. I don't know that we should even risk the comm …"

"We're risking it!" Riley interrupted sharply. "If you hadn't had the comm in DC, he would've killed you. And he's got Jack and I am NOT losing you both because you want to go all one-man-show!"

"Okay, Ri, I'll keep the comm," Mac conceded. "Do you have visual?"

"We do," Todd answered. "Weather's moving in again though so the clouds may be a problem."

"Well," Mac said. "We'll just have to do this fast then and get everybody home before we get an up close and personal with a Lost Coast storm."

He got out of the car cautiously, looking around. The fire had been a hot one because in the short time it had taken to get him and the team out to the area, it had burnt down to nothing but embers. Now in the moonlight, he could see a picnic table. In the middle of it was a laptop with a blank screen. As he approached it, it flashed on with the blue-tinged light that was so ubiquitous you barely ever noticed it had a color. The face he most expected, but least wanted to see appeared on the screen.

"Good morning, Angus!" he began cheerfully. And it _was_ technically morning. Although, Mac thought to himself, they were still a long damned way from the dawn.

"Murdoc," Mac acknowledged, stepping closer to the screen. "Where are they?"

"Right down to business. I'd feel slighted that you didn't want to chat, but you must be very worried." The words went up at the end, almost a question; a mocking ridiculous question. Instead of giving him what he wanted, Mac just waited. He saw a frown pass briefly over Murdoc's features and he felt a fleeting satisfaction. "Never fear, my dear Angus," he said brightly and then paused to chuckle to himself. "The blood on your floor was mine. Our Jack managed to wrestle my own knife away from me. He's certainly a fighter."

Mac felt a second of relief but Murdoc quashed it quickly.

"Fortunately for me he is also a universal donor. And my but he does get twitchy about needles, poor fellow. Although at the moment I can hardly blame him."

The view on the screen shifted. Jack, looking like he was half asleep, was tied up, with his arms in front of him, wrists bound to his ankles, sitting on the ground propped up against a rough stone wall of some sort. Other than an eye that was swelling shut and a bloodied lip, he didn't look badly injured. But the relevant concern at the moment was the needle and tubing taped to the crook of his elbow, slowly allowing blood to drip to the floor. "Let him go, Murdoc." Mac only just prevented himself from raising his voice. Letting this guy know his buttons were pushed was the worst possible way to respond. "I'm here. That's what you wanted, right? I surrender, or whatever it is you need to hear. Just get that thing out of Jack's arm and let him go."

The image of Jack remained in front of him. Jack looked like he was trying to pull his eyes open as Murdoc's voice resumed. "Oh, no, Angus, don't be silly. That's not how this game is played. Besides, as I mentioned, I owe Jack some real blood loss. One of the advantages to not feeling pain, as you've undoubtedly learned is the case for me, is that extracting a bullet and cauterizing a wound is a mere trifle. So I haven't taken his actions overly personally. He may yet live."

Jack had managed to pry his eyes open. "I hope for your sake every one of your nerves is dead, man, 'cause when Mac gets me outta this, I'm gonna go lookin'."

"Jack," Mac called out, wanting Jack to know he was on his way. Jack focused on the tablet Murdoc was aiming at him, glad to see Mac looking back at him with his game face on. "Only you could make a _Deadpool_ reference while being held hostage and tortured slowly to death."

"I'm good like that." Jack smiled although it was more of a grimace with his swollen lip. His voice was strained, tired, but he was classic Jack all the way; something that Mac found heartening. "I'm okay, Mac. Jim, too."

The view spun around before Jack could say anything else. "Tut tut. You won't chat with me, but you'll banter all day with Jackson. It won't do."

"What do you want, Murdoc?" Mac wasn't sure how long Jack had, or how much blood he'd already lost, but any idiot could have drawn the conclusion, even if their brain wasn't trying to give them a mental wedgie by throwing the math of the situation at them, that time was short.

"Well, I want to talk to you, Angus. I want to play a game. If you win, you walk away. If you don't ... Well, I'll probably kill you. But not quickly, oh no. You've earned some of my undivided attention."

Mac prevented himself from the hard visible swallow he felt the urge for. His team was minutes out and they were hearing all of this. He had back up, real back up, and he was going to get everyone out of this. "Then let's talk."

"In person. And you really don't have a lot of time, in the grand scheme of things. Jackson has been bleeding for a while now … and then there is the tide to consider."

Mac frowned, "Tide?"

"Well where did you think we were, Angus? I've obviously brought Half-Dad and Dad 2.0 to the cave you were never quite able to drum up the courage to see. Perhaps you're not as bright as I thought."

Mac snapped, "If you could stop pretending you even think you're smarter than me, that would be great. We both know what our IQ scores are. You're not as smart as you want everyone to think."

"Enough talk," Murdoc said coldly, more than a little flustered if the flash in his snakelike eyes told any kind of story. "There's one way down. You've tried it before and failed. High tide is just after dawn, young man. I suggest you get a move on." Mac opened his mouth to reply but Murdoc cut him off. "I'll be watching. And if I get so much as a sniff that you have help or you're not alone, all you will find when you get here is two men who've been gut shot beyond help and no me."

The screen went blank.

"Did you guys get that?" Mac asked, his voice not as even as he would have wanted it.

"Yeah, Mac," Riley answered, her voice at least as shaky as his.

"Good." He walked over to the guardrail, took a deep breath, and climbed over, heart hammering in his chest.

0-0-0

Mac had made it about as far as that last time he'd been on this rock face when the rain began and the wind picked up. Sounding more in control than he would have expected at that moment, Mac asked, "How's visual now?"

"Spotty," Todd answered. "How you holding up, Mac?"

Mac paused, checking his footing and cursing the need to look down to do so, before he said, "Well, I think I've only wet myself twice, so it's going better than the last time." His voice was shaking but the humor there was unmistakable.

Todd chuckled appreciatively, even though he didn't feel much like laughing. He was sure Mac needed to see whatever humor he could find at the moment. "We've got air support with medical staff ready to roll the second you say the word, but I'm thinking of trying a ground approach to back you up. Ri can't keep visual as much as I'd like."

"No!" Mac said, the panic he was feeling overall, finally creeping into his voice. "You heard what he said." Mac made it to a slightly wider outcropping of rock and paused to rest. His shoulder was throbbing (although he was doing his best to ignore that fact) and the combination of physical activity and pure adrenaline made his whole body feel like a live wire.

Todd went on patiently. "There's an approach from the picnic area on the beach you saw coming in. I'd have to do some climbing at the end to get over the ridge, but I think I could get really close without him getting a visual on me. Besides, if he's watching like he says he is, he's focused on you anyway."

Mac started climbing again. "Ri, you're looking at the sat feed. What do you think?"

There was a pause, during which Mac slipped a little on the newly wet rocks, only managing to catch himself from tumbling down about sixty feet of what he had to admit was not quite as vertical a cliff as he remembered. Unfortunately, he caught himself with his left arm and he felt the sickening pop that he knew mean something tore (or was torn more if the low grade lectures he'd been getting from Steve were accurate). There was a fair amount of swearing that, while it was under his breath, was easily picked up by the comms. Instead of commenting on it or asking what happened Riley just answered his question. If he and Jack got out of this she personally planned on Bozer's mother-hen routine looking like summer camp before she let either of those guys out of her sight again. "I think he could do it, Mac. He's in full tactical with night vision and it's still pretty much black down here."

"Down here? Are you on that beach already?" Mac was not amused that the decision had already been made to try that approach. His check-in was probably all that stopped it from being executed already.

Riley paused again. "Um … yeah. We moved support closer when we heard what he's up to. On Matty's orders."

Well, there was no arguing with Matty. Mac refocused on the climb, limbs shaking with fatigue and now what was very likely injury. He had grown so accustomed to the drop below him that it almost didn't bother him to check his footing now. He wondered if it was that or if the human mind simply had a saturation point for how afraid it could be; like if you got to a certain level your brain just cut you off from it because it couldn't let your body dump more fight or flight chemicals into your blood because it would probably kill you. _Get a grip, Mac_ , he thought to himself. He knew babbling when he heard it and counted on his brain not to do it to him when there wasn't even anyone else around to get babbly at. "Copy," was all Mac said. He was close to the bottom now and he could see where light was flickering out of a gap in the rocks. He didn't want Murdoc to overhear him talking. And he didn't have the breath to waste on arguing anyway.

The waves were crashing against the rocks in earnest now and Mac noticed the faintest hint of grey beginning to creep into the eastern sky. Out over the water was still black as ink though. He glanced at his watch. Just after three. Despite his earlier thought about a certain level of fear being the maximum his heart began to hammer even louder in his chest. Jack had been bleeding for hours. Not many … but … _Enough_ , he admonished himself. He edged down the last steep slide of wet rock and was doused with an icy wave breaking there at the same moment. High tide was coming and no mistake. They'd be under water in less than two hours. At least the cold water gave him an excuse to be shivering he thought somewhat wryly. He looked back up the rock face and allowed himself a momentary feeling of satisfaction that he thought his adolescent self would have really appreciated. Mac took a deep breath to compose himself and arranged his face to what Jack affectionately called his 'game on' expression.

Then, Mac stepped into the narrow mouth of the cave.


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N - Some whump and some action; hopefully this meets expectations and requests. There's also massive bromance because I can't help myself._

Mac took in the cave quickly with a practiced eye. There was a fire near the mouth of the cave that was well stoked and he could feel its heat even through his wet clothes. Jack and Jim were back away from the entrance, almost to where the darkness at the rear of the cave met the light of the fire. Almost nothing else. He could see that Jack's eyes were more alert than when he's seen him on the video, so that vagueness hadn't been blood loss, he'd probably been drugged. That was encouraging. He could also see that Jack had sort of pressed himself up against the rocks on the side of the venipuncture and his t-shirt was shucked up on that side. Mac breathed a slight sigh of relief. Jack had bunched the shirt up under his arm and was using pressure to slow his own bleeding. Not a perfect solution, but it had probably bought him some time. There was blood on the floor near him, but it didn't look to be an irrevocably dangerous amount. Jim was on the opposite wall, hands bound behind his back, his upper arm was bleeding and it looked to Mac at first glance like a bullet graze, and he'd clearly been in a fight if the bruising and swelling of his face was any indication, but he was conscious and fidgeting. A voice spoke low in Mac's ear. "I'm almost to your position. There's a boat moored just off the rocks on the other side of the ridge. Must be how he got there with our guys."

There was no immediate sign of Murdoc and Mac was almost prepared to just go to Jack and get him out of immediate peril when Murdoc stepped out of the shadows at the rear of the cave and stood between his captives, aiming his standard semi-automatic level with Mac's chest. "Well, that took you long enough, Angus."

Mac saw Jim's eyes close for a second as he remembered the first moments of their reunion. In response Mac gave him a half-smile and a little nod, as if to say it was already forgiven, before he gave his attention to Murdoc. His attention was accompanied by a slightly derisive expression that Murdoc had given him before. "If I'd come down the quick way, we wouldn't be having a conversation. That's one hell of a drop."

Jack was flashing Mac an approving grin as Murdoc's eyes narrowed. _What would it take to see this man lose his composure?_ He really wanted to know. "Since you've come all this way, we might as well play the little game I mentioned. Are you ready?"

Mac shrugged out of pure habit, but winced at the surprising blossom of pain the small movement cause him. It didn't go unnoticed by Murdoc, but he let it pass.

"It's really quite simple. Simply choose one of these men to walk out of here with you and I'll let that happen. The other, of course, dies. But I promise to make it quick, if that's helpful." He looked Mac up and down, taking the measure of the man and not quite knowing what to make of the expression that was creeping over Mac's face.

"No."

"That's not an option, Angus. I said choose!" Murdoc snapped.

"I just said no. I'm not playing with someone else's life like that."

"It's simple, Angus. Your father or your partner. You owe both of them your life in their own ways. Which means more to you?"

"I'm not doing it, Murdoc. If they were two complete strangers I wouldn't put more value on one of them than the other."

His voice and expression were so resolute, and the time for this game was so limited by the tide, Murdoc decided to try something else. Murdoc took on the look of a coiled snake, a very irritated coiled snake, maybe one someone's been poking with a stick. "Fine. Let's change things up then, shall we? Mr. Dalton, Mr. MacGyver, the first one of you to speak up in favor of the other's death gets to walk out of here with dear Angus. If you don't choose, I will make you very very sorry."

They both glanced at Mac as his expression remained totally neutral, but Jack could see his eyes pleading for them to refuse. Mac saw that Jack understood, but he couldn't read Jim's expression. He supposed he just didn't know him well enough, maybe he never had. Jack wrung a smile from Mac with his smirking answer to Murdoc. "You have something in your teeth."

Murdoc just looked confused. Mac piled on, wrong-footing the man further. "I would have gone with 'you're about to be killed by a zamboni', but at least I know what we're watching when we get home."

Frustrated by what amounted to a secret language between the partners, Murdoc looked to his other captive. "And what have you to say, _Dad_?"

Mac swallowed hard, not knowing what might come next, but prepared to throw himself at Murdoc if he made a move toward Jack. Jim looked up at Murdoc and shook his head. "You're going to die. In five minutes."

Jack actually laughed a little. "The old man for the win. Damn that was good."

Murdoc clearly had no idea what was behind the humor at his expense, but he stepped away from the two men on the floor and toward Mac (who felt like he should probably be more afraid, but instead he was thinking that if he had to die, it would at least be with people who were worthy of it, who had the courage to refuse to bend, when almost anyone else would break). For a split second Jim locked eyes with Mac and gave him a little nod. Mac blinked his understanding as Murdoc leveled his weapon at him again.

"This is so unfortunate." Murdoc gave a nervous almost tittering laugh. "I'd really hoped for something more entertaining, but we are really getting down to the wire for time."

Mac could hear the water lapping into the cave now as the waves broke and although he hadn't noticed it further wet his feet some made it as far as the fire making it hiss, and pop, and spark, sending up puffs of steam between him and Murdoc for a moment. "Okay, Murdoc," he said, more buying time than anything else, fairly certain that Jim had gotten at least his hands free. "What's it gonna be?"

"I guess I'm just going to have to kill all of you. And I'd really love to give it the time and attention it deserves, but alas, I appear to be running out of it."

Mac saw the man's hand tense to fire his gun so he dove around the fire, not quite connecting with the force he had hoped for, but sending Murdoc careening into the cave wall nonetheless. He cried out as Murdoc, unable to get into a good position to fire, brought the stock down on his bad shoulder and he was fairly certain something broke at that moment. Another wave crashed, this time filling the cave with more much more steam and darkening things considerably. Someone else knocked into Murdoc just as he was preparing to shoot Mac, although Mac couldn't see who it was, maybe Todd, maybe Jim. His first priority now that he wasn't the one grappling with Murdoc was to get to Jack. There was gunfire, deafening in the cave, and shouting, and more billowing steam, but somehow Mac found Jack struggling to free himself so he could enter the fray. Before doing anything else, Mac pulled the needle out of his friend's arm with a mumbled, "Sorry, big guy." And then he got out his knife and cut Jack's bonds. There was another gunshot and a shout of pain that Mac recognized immediately. Without even thinking, he dove into the chaos with a shout of his own. "Dad!"

Jack was right behind him, unsteady on his feet, but determined. A huge wave broke then, sending all of them rushing toward the back of the cave and plunging them into darkness. After a few painful disorienting moments of being dashing against the rocks, Mac could feel himself being pulled back toward the mouth of the cave by the receding wave. Suddenly he was outside on the barest lip of rock between the entrance to the cave and the roiling sea beyond. His ears were ringing and he realized he'd lost his comm. He blinked hard up into the rain now falling in sheets. The sky was grey enough to see his immediate surroundings and he pushed himself up to try to find his companions, and his enemy. Jack was face down on the rocks close by, unconscious, but visibly breathing. Todd was pulling himself off the edge of the rocks toward them. He couldn't see his father or Murdoc. Before he could clear his head enough to get too frantic a boat came into sight, searchlights and a deck crew were visible even in the stormy gloom. Instead of approaching the rocks, they slowed. At first Mac thought that maybe it was too stormy too approach, but he quickly realized they were pulling someone out of the water. Todd was helping him to his feet, saying something, but he couldn't hear him, he was too focused on the limp form being hauled up the side of the boat. He realized that Todd moved in front of him, rousing Jack and helping him up before he got himself washed out to sea. For a second the ringing in Mac's ears was louder, but then Jack was in front of him, shaking him gently by one shoulder. "Mac! Mac! Can you hear me, bud?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Sorry. I'm okay. Are you okay?"

Jack shrugged and wove for a second, clearly pretty dizzy. "I will be. They got your dad out there, bud. He's alive. But he got shot, bein' a big damn hero just like his kid. Stupid brave must actually run in the family."

Mac looked out toward the boat that was already speeding south, away from them. "Hospital?" he asked, not quite capable of more at the moment.

"Fast as they can get him there, kid."

Todd stepped next to them now that Mac seemed back in the conversation. "Our transport is about five minutes out. The helicopter couldn't take off once the storm started rolling in."

The water was getting higher by the second. Jack hedged, "We probably better move to higher ground or somebody's gonna be fishin' us outta the drink in a minute."

Somehow, they managed it. Other than being a little wet and knocked around, Todd was unhurt so he was able to help his teammates navigate the rocky outcropping to wait for their ride atop it. When the boat arrived it fortunately had both Riley and Steve on board. Todd was joining up with some of the other tactical squad to go over the boat he'd seen that Jack had confirmed was how Murdoc got them to the cave. The rest of the team boarded the rescue craft and Steve immediately earned himself Jack's dirtiest look by insisting on sitting him down and taking his vitals. He got something of a smile when he told him he didn't think it was actually all that bad. Then the dirty look came back when Steve told Jack he was still going to the hospital to be evaluated. He cleaned and bandaged Jack's arm as it was still leaking and told him that he was going to have one hell of a bruise. When Steve was finished with him, Riley passed Jack hot coffee from a thermos, courtesy of the Coast Guard guys Matty had called in to assist them. She was about to pass some to Mac as well when Steve turned his attention to the younger man and his eyes widened.

"Don't give him anything to drink," he admonished Riley, who immediately took a step back. That was Steve's attending physician tone and when he used it you didn't ask questions.

Mac glared at him and Riley both. His teeth were chattering. "I'm freezing my ass off!"

Steve calmly sat down next to him, seemingly unaware of the pitching of the boat. "Mac," he began.

"Look, I just want to follow my dad to the hospital and …"

"Oh, you're going to the hospital, don't even worry about that, buddy."

Mac frowned.

"I didn't realize it when you guys came on board, but, if your shoulder wasn't already screwed up it sure is now, man. You have a broken collar bone that I can see through your shirt. I don't know how you haven't just passed out. You want something for the pain now?"

Mac looked confused. "It doesn't hurt."

It wasn't the irritated assertion that everyone knew meant he was actually hurt but wanted to be left alone. He was genuinely not sure what the fuss was about. Steve took a pair of scissors out of his bag, but held up his hands clearly putting the ball in Mac's court. "I don't want to touch anything, but I do want to take a look, okay?"

Mac frowned again, suddenly worried, remembering when he'd been half blown up in Afghanistan and convinced that his arm was paralyzed. Then he flexed his hand and it moved just fine; he started to pick his arm up to prove to himself that that worked too, but Steve stopped him. "No moving, okay?" Mac nodded. "Sorry about your t-shit, but I'm gonna cut it away from that side so I can get a better idea of what we're looking at."

"What about Murdoc?" Mac asked no one in particular.

Jack just shook his head. "Todd got him square in the chest. He's sure. But no body so far. The Coast Guard is still lookin' though. They might have to go in if the storm gets worse."

Mac just nodded, frowning. It was no more or less than he expected.

Unable to give him something hot to drink, but seeing just how badly he was shivering, Riley went and asked for a blanket. These Coast Guard guys had a warmer for situations like this. She draped it over Mac's good side and then moved so Jack could sit next to him. She wanted to yell at him and tell him he shouldn't have gotten up because he looked too pale and close to passing out, but as usual, he was too caught up in what was going on with his partner to worry too much about it. Steve had told him he'd be fine and that was good enough for him. Riley sighed and sat down across from them, glad she'd taken some seasickness pills when they moved to the beach. When Steve cut away the sleeve of Mac's t-shirt he let out a low whistle. "Yup, nothing to drink was a good call. When did you eat last, Mac?"

"Um," Mac thought about it. "Dinner. Sixish last night."

Steve checked his watch. "That should be okay by the time we get there." Mac raised his eyebrows in a question. "I know you aren't gonna want to hear it, but this is surgery. Maybe more than one. It's in pieces, Mac."

Mac frowned and finally ventured a look down. "Uh, I think I might be sick."

"Well don't look, dumdum," Jack teased to distract him, putting his hand on Mac's back.

Mac just closed his eyes and nodded. As he got up, Steve said, "I'm going to call ahead, make sure they've got the ortho on call ready and an OR prepped. I'm worried about fragments. So _don't_ move."

Jack just waved at him, indicating that he'd make sure Mac stayed put. When Steve came back a few minutes later he rattled off some information Mac was sure was important, but he didn't really take in any of it, he was too busy thinking. Finally when Steve stopped talking, he forced his eyes open. "Have you heard how my dad is?"

He gave Mac a reassuring smile. It was both practiced and sincere. "Stable. Going into surgery, but stable."

"Thanks," he said quietly. "And Jack is really going to be okay?"

"I'm sittin' right next to you, ya brat. You could ask me."

"Is he?" Mac pressed.

"By tomorrow morning, other than being resentful about being a pincushion, Jack will be good as new." Jack grumbled under his breath and Steve gave him a sympathetic glance. "Well, maybe a black eye and a swollen face away from new, but otherwise, just our favorite Jackass all around."

Mac nodded, and then flinched away from the pain that blossomed with the movement. "Ah, hell."

Steve and Jack exchanged a knowing look. "Adrenaline's starting to fade, huh, bud?" Jack asked. Mac didn't answer, just squeezed his eyes shut.

Steve carefully said, "We have a stretcher here, Mac. I wasn't going to suggest you …"

"No, that's good. Horizontal would be better." He sounded tired.

A few minutes later, Mac was situated as comfortably as it was possible to be, blessedly covered in every warmed blanket Riley could lay her hands on. Despite trying very hard not to, he'd been sick when he'd finally moved. When Steve suggested he could start an IV and give him something for his pain and maybe for the nausea, he was expecting Mac to protest. Instead Mac said yeah, okay, they'd have to start one for surgery anyway and he'd rather Steve did it. Jack was sitting nearby, starting to feel a little worse for wear but still raised his eyebrows at Steve. Steve took Mac's left hand without being reminded. Then Jack took Mac's free hand and gave it a little squeeze when, against his finer impulses, Mac still winced at the stick. "You're being shockingly cool right now, Mac. I don't have being this cool in me, even at all."

Mac opened his eyes and gave Jack a small smile. "Dude, I scaled my Everest in the dark today." Jack smiled back, nodding proudly. "And my family made it out."

Jack nodded. "Your dad is gonna be okay Mac, for real."

Mac squeezed Jack's hand, suddenly sleepy, and knowing Steve had added something to his IV, he just didn't fight the feeling, or the complete honesty it facilitated. "Yeah," he sighed, thinking Murdoc had said at least one true thing today. "Both of you."

His eyes closed. After a few minutes his breathing leveled out and it was clear he'd fallen asleep. Jack looked at Steve, his eyes misty, and if anyone ever said anything to him about it he would've claimed blood loss and his weakened state, but Steve looked at both Jack and his young partner fondly. "I love the hell out of this kid, man."

"Of course you do, Jack. And it's obviously mutual."


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N Here's some fluff while I figure out what to do next._

True to form, Jack had violated as many hospital policies and ruffled as many feathers as he ever did to be sitting by Mac's side when he woke up from surgery. The first thing Mac saw was the totally disgruntled expression on the nurse's face when Jack said, "Damn it woman, I'll let you know if I'm havin' a reaction. I've got the post-transfusion checklist memorized. This ain't my first rodeo."

Then he noticed Mac's eyes were open.

"Hey, bud. How ya feelin'?" he asked, leaning closer.

Mac took a second to absorb his surroundings and take stock of what was hidden under enough bandages and packing to have one half of him look like he was geared up for a game of football. Then he cleared his throat. "Numb; which, all things being equal, is a huge improvement. How about you?"

"I'd be fine if the lovely ladies down here in Recovery didn't keep mistaking me for one of their patients."

The brunette who had to be around Jack's age and had an expression that said she'd seen and heard it all, whose name was Marilyn according to the name tag Mac's eyes were now focused enough to read, began, "Mr. Dalton, you've just …"

"Already been discharged, thank you very much. You pay attention to your actual patient now, if you don't mind," Jack drawled. Steve hadn't been happy with him, but Jack told him nothing was keeping him stuck in bed, randomly stabbed with sharp objects, unless there was a damned good reason, and that was especially true if he thought Mac needed him. Steve had countered that Jack didn't have a better reason for getting out of bed than he or the attending on call had for wanting him to stay in it. Jack was having none of their arguments. _He_ was fine. And he had a reason for getting out of bed. Waking up in a hospital, even if the kid was expecting it, constituted a pretty goddamned significant reason, in Jack's book.

She gave Jack a truly disapproving expression and he just tipped her a wink. She resisted the urge to wink back, although she had to admit if the man offered to buy her a drink off duty the enthusiasm with which she'd probably say yes would likely be embarrassing, and shifted focus to the young man still blinking drug-induced sleep out of his eyes. Mac answered her list of questions just as pleasantly as possible. He even gave her his specially-reserved thousand watt smile when she raised the head of the bed for him. When she finished checking him over, noting the numbers on various monitors, and assuring herself that he was comfortable, she asked if he wanted something to drink, and then bustled away to get him his requested cranberry juice. Mel had told him that the secret to getting what you wanted out of nurses was to make their lives even marginally easier even if only by being pleasant. So far, it seemed she was right. He wondered fleetingly if that would actually work on _her_ since he could probably count on a fair number of follow ups and rehab in the infirmary once they got home from this mission. He squinted at Jack, needing to ask now that they were alone, "How's my dad?"

Jack gave him a big grin. "He's good. Got a little water in his lungs, but he never stopped breathing on his own. He was hit in the leg and the bullet wandered around a little, but the upside is they were able to fix up some stuff in his messed up knee while they were poking around in there, so he may actually come out of this better off than before he got shot. Speaking of," Jack pulled out his phone and started typing with his thumb. "He's texted me about every ten minutes since they took him to his room askin' about you."

Mac frowned. "How long was I out?"

Jack shrugged, glancing at his watch. "About six hours I guess."

"Six?" Mac asked with slight alarm.

"Yeah, well, you were a little shocky when we got here so they had to deal with that. Then they had to get your collar bone back together and you had like three different tears in there they had to fix up. Two of 'em were old, too. Steve is gonna chew you a new one at some point."

Mac shook his head. "I'll just concede his point before he even gets going. I knew it was still messed up even before this morning. It was stupid to ignore it."

"Well, well, aren't you agreeable as hell just now," Jack smirked. "New tactic?"

"Works doesn't it? You don't want to lecture me even a little bit right now."

Jack was chuckling and shaking his head when the nurse came back with his juice. "Thanks," Mac said, immediately taking a long sip from the straw. "Any chance I could get something to eat? A sandwich maybe?"

Jack's eyebrows went up before she could answer, "You're hungry?"

Mac shrugged with his good shoulder. "You have to eat before they'll let you leave," he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. He gave the nurse another blinding smile. "I'll take anything, honestly. I'm not picky."

He got a reserved smile in return. "I can bring you some crackers for now. Someone will bring you lunch when you get up to your room."

Mac's cajoling smile evaporated. "Wait … No room. No way. This was just shoulder surgery. That means I get to leave."

Jack shook his head, grinning. _That didn't last long._

The nurse doubled down on her own smile. "It was emergency shoulder surgery after an accident, Mr. MacGyver. The accident resulted in more than just your shoulder injury. You have multiple bruises and lacerations. For that alone, observation is indicated. And as to your shoulder, the nerve block hasn't even started wearing off yet. It can affect your heart rate and breathing for a few hours and …"

"I've had shoulder surgery before," he asserted. "I feel great."

She just resumed as though he hadn't spoken, "And in addition to needing to be monitored, you may be in a fair amount of pain once the block does begin to wear off. It was an extensive repair."

"I've never really been able to take strong pain medications, so I'm confident I'll be able to manage. And I fell down. That hardly requires a night in the hospital for someone my age with my general health." She was about to speak again, but Mac just continued smoothly, giving her a charming head tilt. "I understand you're just executing the orders the surgeon left. I don't mean to be difficult."

He tossed Jack a glare when he heard his partner snort a laugh and mumble, "That'd be a first."

The nurse glanced at the monitor next to the gurney, then back at Mac. He seemed very determined. "Your respiration rate is good, O2 sat's fine, heart rate … exceptional, actually. No trouble swallowing?"

"Nope." Mac took another sip of cranberry juice as proof. "So, are we good with the whole no-room-for-Mac thing now?"

One corner of her lips quirked up. "We're good with telling Dr. Hernandez that you would prefer not to be transferred upstairs and would like to discuss early discharge."

"But I …"

Marilyn shook her head. "She'll be in to speak with you shortly." Mac gave a resigned sigh. The poor young man looked so dejected; she felt she could make at least one concession without hearing from Dr. Hernandez first. "I'll get you a sandwich while you wait. Turkey okay with you, honey?"

Mac's grin was back. "That's great. Thank you."

0-0-0

Jim's dinner had just arrived and he was eyeing it dubiously when Mac walked stiffly through the door of his hospital room, amusingly clad in a button-up shirt, sweatpants, and boat shoes, wearing a sling that was wrapped up against his body with additional straps and looking about as comfortable as a turkey trussed up for the oven. He clearly hadn't let anyone help him get dressed, which told Jim plainly that some things never changed. The kid was still stubborn as a mule. Actually he could probably give mules lessons, come to think of it. Well, that was no surprise, since Jim had originally been expecting a roommate and Jack had texted a while ago that that wasn't going to be the case and that Mac was so gifted at the big-eyed kicked puppy routine when he wanted something that it would probably take him less than five minutes to wrap the Queen of England around his pinky. And the pisser was the kid didn't even seem to realize he was doing it. Instead of the fatherly concern that still felt completely natural to him despite their years of estrangement, he tamped down on the urge to question his son's decision and turned off his television with an overly casual, "Nice threads."

Mac immediately grinned and shook his head as he took a seat next to the bed. "Yeah, well … they were independent if not fashionable. Riley is a total hero. She just showed up with exactly what I could reasonably dress myself in."

Jim smiled. "Riley is an incredible young woman." He couldn't resist the paternal interest in Mac's future completely so he asked, "Any chance you two ..?"

Mac laughed. "God, no." Jim raised his eyebrows. "Don't get me wrong, Ri is _amazing_ … and if circumstances were even a little different … I mean, she's brilliant, beautiful, in the life … But Boze used to have a really hard crush on her. I don't think either of us could ever do that to him, even if he has moved on. "

"How is Wilt?" he asked to change what was obviously an uncomfortable subject, although he wondered briefly how that might play out between them if Wilt made it clear he didn't mind. He knew Mac had been thinking a lot of a life beyond Phoenix, had talked about it several times over the last two weeks. In their business, if you didn't want to lie to someone, you had to meet them at work.

"Good. I don't know that he's happy with his role at Phoenix, but … he is happy that we can be honest with each other now." He saw the shadow pass over Jim's features and added, "Sometimes you have to lie in this life. It's not fun, but it's what you do."

"You don't ever stop regretting it."

Mac swallowed hard. He wasn't ready for that conversation. "How's the leg?"

"Good, actually. I was so used to the pain in my knee, I never even considered that it could be repaired. My current nurse is sort of horrified that I haven't needed anything stronger than ibuprofen, but I woke up in less pain than I've had in years."

"You'll probably be out of here in the morning then?" Mac asked.

"Looks like. My breathing is still a little uncomfortable, but they're giving me lots of good antibiotics for the GSW and the fact that I inhaled half the Pacific, so unless I start running a high fever or anything, I should be discharged tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm not in any particular hurry." Then he couldn't stop himself. "You sure you should be leaving today?"

Mac shook his head with a wry grin. "You sound like Jack."

Jim nodded. "I'm okay with that. He's obviously done a hell of a job looking out for you when … well, when you didn't have anyone else."

"Dad, don't."

Jim's breath caught in his chest when Mac called him Dad. He actually had a moment where he had to consciously decide to breathe. He took in Mac's overly bright eyes, then he just offered, "Okay, I won't. Unless you decide you want to." Mac nodded his thanks. Jim paused. "Where is Jack anyway? From his texts I got the impression he doesn't really intend to let you out of his sight for a while."

Mac shook his head, then his eyes narrowed with obvious pain. He pulled at one of the straps on his sling with a frustrated sigh. Then he smiled again. "Flirting with the charge nurse, last I checked."

Jim chuckled. Then he poked at whatever was on his plate sort of halfheartedly with his fork.

"You're not gonna eat your dinner?" Mac asked with a hint of amusement.

Jim grimaced. "I've never really minded hospitals, but the food is still … let's just say 'less than desirable'."

Mac grinned. "Want some take-out? Fried chicken maybe?"

Jim smiled back. "I'm pretty sure that's against the rules."

Mac stood up, grinning like a kid. "I _suck_ at rules."

"Some things never change, huh, kiddo?"

Mac stopped as he was almost out the door, suddenly just a little serious. "The good things never do."


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N - Hey, guys! Happy Independance Day, or as I like to call it the Annual Celebration of Alcohol, Incendiaries, and Bad Decisions! In the Venn diagram of your day, do your best to only combine two (if you must combine any at all)._

 _Here's another fluffy little chapter that exists in response to some requests for some more hurt/comforty whumpy goodness. I swear I'm cooking up more action, I just haven't decided if it's going to happen in this story or if I'd rather set it up for its own. We'll have to see. I never know what's going to happen when I start opening up cabinets in my personal mind palace (more of a mind bus station, really, but you get the idea). Anyhow, have a fabulous day and if you're a crazy fellow American, try to be safe, considerate of your neighbors and your local emergency services workers *nods respectfully to Gib*, and veterans in your area. (Like if you really need to explode stuff to feel the freedom, maybe let them know first). Enjoy._

Matty had ordered a team to bring Jim's boat back down the coast and sent the company jet to bring her team home. The conversation on the short flight had centered almost entirely around the fact that the Coast Guard had not recovered Murdoc's body. Mac had been quiet throughout. In the end, when Todd was saying what a relief it was that their adversary was presumed dead, Mac finally spoke. "I'll never presume anything about that … man … ever again. He alive and gunning for us until I see his bleached bones with my own eyes."

Everyone's eyes had widened and there were general expressions of disbelief at his words and the cold tone in his voice. Everyone but Jack. He noticed, but didn't comment. He knew Mac was capable of resorting to real violence in the face of evil. He was sitting here because of it; but he sure wished everyone else would shut up about how that wasn't part of Mac's character. It just made things worse. Mac was still working through Murdoc's assertion that they were somehow alike and he thought he was maybe ready to finally talk to Sissy about it … and maybe Jack … but not anyone else; not now, and maybe not ever. Jack knew it, and was slowly trying to get him to see the game Murdoc was playing, that a willingness to kill didn't equate to an enjoyment of it, a justification for it. It was funny how Mac seemed to have no trouble applying that idea to Jack and the lived he'd taken, but couldn't seem to see that the same was true about himself. Finally, after taking in the subtle changes in Mac's face and body language, Jack suggested in a tone that didn't leave much room for refusal, maybe they could talk about something else, since none of them knew what it was like to have the nutjob try to crawl around in their brains. Mac gave him a grateful look. In sympathy for just how violated the assassin's obsession must be making Mac feel, Jim had interjected, "At least I think I have an idea of how to go after the Organization from my old work now. They're using a similar network and methodology if Murdoc is still important to them. We _CAN_ bring them down."

Mac had looked at him then, an affection neither of them had ever hoped for returning, slowly, but returning nevertheless, and said. "And we will."

Jack had added his two cents worth of support with a drawl. "Damn straight, son."

It was just a turn of phrase, a common colloquialism, but he and Jim exchanged a look, a nod, imperceptible to anyone else, even to Mac, but both men knew they had an understanding then. Both men knew that from here on out, they shared a priority mission. And both knew that one of them had a lot of catching up to do. They touched down not long after and clearly Mac hadn't sensed any change in their relationship, but there was one, no matter how subtle.

In the following few weeks, the new rhythm of their lives, the new dynamics of work and family, began to feel normal.

0-0-0

"Ow," Mac admitted softly, his face creasing all around his closed eyes.

"Sorry, Mac," Mel offered, as she finished maneuvering him out of the sling. "I think Doc's gonna tell you another week or two with the sling at least before you can start rehab at this rate."

Mac opened his eyes and sighed. "Yeah, I kinda figured. It's been slow going this time around. I'm starting to go a little stir crazy. You …" he trailed off, shifting a little nervously on the exam table.

"What?"

"You think I'm going to need another surgery?"

Mel's usually clinical, bordering on slightly amused, expression softened. "Mac, I'm a nurse …"

"You know what you're doing, probably more than half the doctors who work here. And you don't sugar coat things … You're part of the team now. I trust your judgment."

She really smiled at him this time. Their relationship had certainly evolved quickly from him and Jack calling her Mistress Mel behind her back and groaning loudly when they saw her coming to asking her to join the rest of the team for a beer or over to Mac's to help keep the sidelined agent entertained playing cards or video games. Then she looked almost regretful. "I think you're healing well, but more slowly than anyone would like to see. And you've admitted to still having pain. That raises eyebrows around here. My best guess … knowing Foster's usual approach … he's probably going to suggest a cortisone injection since you're still having pain and swelling. And then he'll make you take a long weekend and have you come back in Monday and reevaluate after a couple of days of enforced rest and ice." Steve said the same thing last night, when Mac had asked if there was any way he would be able to just see him. Riley had rained on that particular parade by saying that Matty was getting fed up with all the staff juggling this ops team was requiring lately. And Steve said he knew it wouldn't make him feel any better, but he'd probably recommend the same things as his colleague. In spite of determined thoughts that he was entirely prepared for that recommendation his eyes squeezed shut for a moment. Mel put a hand on his arm. "Mac …" He forced his eyes open to look at her. "He normally has one of the PA's assist, but if you'd feel better with a familiar face, I could stay …"

"Please."

Such a simple word, said with such naked trust, Mel looked at Mac for a long moment before leaving to tell Dr. Foster he was ready. It was still on her mind when she went back into the treatment room later, where she had left Mac with an ice pack after the procedure, to check on him and tell him he could take off the ice and head out if he was ready; and to find out if he needed her to track down Jack or if he was just going to call for a ride. He'd probably say he could go back to work, but she wanted to discourage even desk duty at the moment. She'd asked where Jack was when he'd arrived since she thought he might need his designated wrangler and hand holder, and Mac had managed a grin. "I don't know. We were doing some mission report stuff and he said he was coming with me, but he disappeared a while ago for coffee and didn't come back." Mac paused. "Steve reminded him he needs follow up blood counts this week. I'm actually betting you won't even see him on this _floor_ until he completely runs out of excuses." Then Mac had sighed, and if Mel had heard Jack's description, she would have recognized his expression as full kicked puppy. "Kind of sympathize with him more than usual at the moment."

She opened the door softly. He was lying on his good side, facing away from the door. She wasn't sure he was awake. Dozing off after a high stress situation was pretty normal and he'd definitely been stressed, though he hadn't said so. Of course, she knew why. She'd been on duty one day when he came in right after his surgery and she'd teased him like she usually did. It was just how their relationship worked. Mac had laughed it off, but Jack had taken her aside and said maybe since she was working with them a lot she should take a look at his early medical history. His raised eyebrows and serious tone made it seem like more than a suggestion. So she had, more out of honest curiosity than anything. She'd been treading lighter ever since. She knew the cortisone would help his recovery, but that didn't make her feel any better about something that obviously triggered traumatic memories for someone who had recently become not just an occasional patient, or colleague, but a friend.

He'd tried not to give anything away, but his eyes had been so wide before he'd scrunched them shut, no one would've mistaken what was in them for anything other than the tightly controlled panic it was. Even with a topical anesthetic, cortisone was an uncomfortable avenue to relief and came at the end of a needle even the most unconcerned patients found upsettingly large. Yet he'd remained outwardly completely calm, enough to thank her for staying with him. As far as Mel was concerned, facing fear, coping with it, and still being who you were in the face of it, truly over coming it – even just moment to moment - was much more impressive than someone being supposedly fearless. Usually the fearless expected you to be impressed. And they made up a rather large majority of the people she dealt with day to day. The valiant overcomers of the world didn't care what you thought; they were just happy they'd made it through.

"Hey, Mac," she said quietly, keeping her physical distance. Surprising one of these guys awake and in swinging range was a mistake she hadn't made since she was just a nurse's assistant.

Mac startled but quickly oriented himself, rolling over and pushing himself up to sitting in one smooth motion. He gave her an almost embarrassed look and said, "I think I might have dozed off. I didn't sleep worth a damn last night."

She smiled at him. "That's okay. The doctor told you to rest for a little while." She thought for a moment. If she didn't tease him at all he would wonder why. Her eyes twinkled just a bit. "For a change you just did what he said. I think I should be worried. Maybe we should admit you."

"Flugelhorn?" he grinned sheepishly. She laughed as he slid off the exam table, unwrapping the ace bandage that had held the ice pack in place over the injection site and tossing it into the linen bin before dropping the disposable ice pack in the trash.

"How do you feel now, really?"

Mac thought about it. "Decent. I wouldn't have thought it was going to be worth the price of admission, but it really does feel better already."

She smiled. "Good! Although I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that he probably won't recommend it again, since more uses increases the risk of side effects."

"Well, that's a relief," he smiled. Then he picked up the sling with a sigh. "Could you give me a hand with this damned thing, please?"

Her smile widened and she stepped closer to help him. After she secured the last strap, she stepped back, she looked into his face, took in his exhaustion. She glanced at her watch. "You ride with Jack today?"

He nodded, glancing down reflexively for a watch that wasn't there because the wrist he normally wore it on was under layers of immobilizing fabric. The he looked up at the wall clock. "Ugh. Couple hours until he's going to be ready to go. If I can find him at all," he grumbled. "I don't think I can face more paperwork. I should just text him and get an Uber or something."

That was an impulse she approved of. "Hang on, I'll be right back."

Mel disappeared out the door and Mac leaned against the exam table, yawning and fixing the top couple of buttons on his shirt when he realized he'd buttoned them wrong after Foster was done playing Spanish Inquisition with him. When she came back in she'd changed into street clothes and had her purse, a beat up canvas thing that looked like it had been a laptop bag, maybe from back when she was still in high school. She jangled her keys. "Text Jack and tell the big chicken you've got a ride. You don't want to wait for him … or fall asleep in some stranger's car."

Mac appreciated the gesture, but didn't want to inconvenience her. She'd already switched around office duties so she could basically hold his hand while he felt like a whiny kid for ten minutes. "You don't have to do that."

She gave him the look, the you're-being-ridiculous look that had previously been reserved for things like pretending a misshapen limb was totally fine or trying to use super glue out of a glove box as a replacement for having a wound stitched properly. "Maybe I want to. And maybe they still haven't found the psycho who's been trying to kill you for over a year and you are not at your best. And I just won't have him messing with you guys or your recovery. If anyone gets to torment you, I believe I've staked my claim on your entire team."

He grinned at her. She made a pretty good point. And she was doing that nose wrinkle thing. He didn't know why the unselfconscious gesture was so endearing but it was. He guessed maybe it was the thing that had first clued him into the fact that she didn't just exist to make their lives miserable and that she actually gave a damn.

"Okay, thanks," he began, getting out his phone to text Jack. "Yes to the ride, but no to the claim staking. I've had enough torment to last me a while." She chuckled, but her expression said she thought that was probably true. "I could offer to buy you some of the best fish tacos in Los Angeles as a very late lunch in exchange for that claim and the ride though."

She put a hand on his good shoulder. "You drive a hard bargain, but I do love tacos."

0-0-0

When Jack got to Mac's he was met with a frowning Mama Bear Bozer in a twist about where Mac was. Jack frowned in return, pulling out his phone to check it. "I figured he rode home with you. I got a text after he finished up at Medical sayin' he had a ride and he'd see me at dinner."

Riley piped up from the couch, "I'm sure he's fine, Boze. I already told you he texted me while you were in the shower and said to tell everybody to go ahead with dinner and to text if we needed more beer."

"Well, why didn't he text me, huh?" Bozer huffed indignantly, as he arranged the meat he was hoping to grill on a large clean plate.

Jim and Todd stepped back in from the deck. Well, Todd just stepped in; Jim was still using one crutch, but managing very well with it. "Probably because he didn't want a full scale interrogation by text," Jim said lightly. "The propane line is fixed, Wilt."

Bozer grinned, "Thanks Mr. Mac. Sorry … Jim."

Jim sat down on the couch, stretching his still-healing leg up onto the coffee table with a contented sigh. "I've already told you call me whatever you want, up to and including the list of names you and Mac came up with when you were kids just mad at me for leaving him. I've seen it and I've earned all of them."

"No way, man. You came back and you did right by my boy and that's all that counts."

Bozer picked up the plate to head outside with it thinking he wanted to get everyone fed and cleanup taken care of so he could head to Beth's sister's birthday party with her. He was all for the routine family meal they'd been gathering for several times a week, but it felt a little crowded at the moment and besides, he was missing his girl. Jack got up to help him. If he didn't supervise, Bozer was always trying to put sauce on things and Jack was still trying to break him of that nasty habit.

Jack grinned at Bozer and gave Jim a nod when Boze added, "Sometimes you gotta let the past you had with somebody go if you want the right now. Mac taught me that."

They'd been out on the deck for a few minutes and the apartment was starting to smell like a really good steakhouse when Mac and Mel came through the door. Greetings were shared around and she shooed Mac toward the couch saying she'd get him some ice. Mac called out that he'd been serious when he'd said he was more interested in a cold beer since she was by the fridge anyway. She shook her head, but obliged by bringing both. When she was satisfied that he was comfortable and had people around to keep him that way, she said to Riley, "Steve has mentioned that you make a very good impromptu nurse when the situation calls for it and since he's home on Daddy Duty tonight … Mac has a prescription on the counter for pain and inflammation. One beer limit, ice every hour, prescription every six, which puts the next one at 9:30. He'll no doubt conveniently forget if a competent adult doesn't remind him."

Riley shared a grin with Mel, mostly because she still felt a little bad about how the whole team had kind of judged her based on Jack and Mac and their strained relationship with most of her department, but also because that summed things up rather nicely. "It's exhausting being the competent adult."

Mel looked at Mac pointedly and grinned. "I feel that spiritually."

Mac just shook his head. "Do you want to stay and have a beer?"

Mel had opened her mouth to answer when Jack and Bozer came in from the porch with their big foil covered plates. They were pretty focused on their task until they'd put the plates down on the table but Jack did notice Mac and call out over his shoulder, "Hey buddy! Where ya been?" on his way by.

"Mel offered to give me a ride home after my appointment since you flaked on me, so I took her to lunch on the way," Mac said, holding up his hand to everyone else in a wait-for-it gesture.

"Now why would you wanna … oooohhh heeeey Mel … Nice to see ya."

Mel laughed at the third-octave rise in Jack's voice and at the absolutely shit eating grin Mac was wearing at the moment. "Hi Jack. Nice to see you too." Bozer raised his eyebrows at the deer-in-the-headlights look Jack was currently wearing, so Mel just gave him her friendliest smile and a little wrinkle of her nose. "I'm off duty, Jack. I come bearing no sharp objects. Unless you count the leatherman I keep in my purse."

"Oh. Good. You want a beer, or maybe some steak that has been grilled according to the strictest code of the great state of Texas, which means I didn't allow Boze to drown it?"

"I appreciate you turning on a dime to offer some hospitality, Dalton, but Mac set a very bad example for saving one's appetite for dinner and may possibly have led me into a competition that resulted in my eating five tacos."

Mac laughed. "Please, you couldn't even half keep up."

"You _were_ a machine." He grinned. He hadn't really eaten since yesterday. He'd been too nervous. Once it was over though, he'd been starving. Hardly fair competitive taco eating circumstances. A rematch should probably be offered at some point. "Listen, I should get going. I wasn't planning on being out late so I need to get home and feed Spot."

"Oh, you have a dog?" Mac asked. He dearly loved dogs and was always a little bummed that his life made it impossible to have one.

She shook her head, almost blushing. "No, she's an orange tabby cat."

Mac grinned hugely. "And I imagine she's a good cat, and a pretty cat."

They both laughed, and everyone else looked confused. "Sorry guys. It's a _Star Trek_ thing."

"Huh?" Bozer was the most lost of anyone.

" _TNG_. Data's cat, Boze," Mac supplied.

He nodded his recognition of the reference, and everyone else seemed to know what they were talking about now. Jack on the other hand just shook his head. "Lord help me, I am surrounded by nerds." Mac got up to walk Mel to the door, even though she gave him a playful glare when he rose. Jack called at his back, "I suppose all this taco gunning means you're not going to eat any of the amazing dinner Bozer and I cooked."

Mac waved his beer and asked, "I saw brats on there, right?"

"You bet!" Bozer grinned.

Mac took a drink of his beer and held up two fingers around the neck of it. Then he set down the bottle so he could open the door for Mel, sighing a little when he thought of how good he was getting at doing things one handed. They stepped outside together. He looked his most serious for a moment. "Thank you."

She smiled. "I was richly remunerated with tacos; we're square."

"No, I mean, for just, everything today." He paused for a deep breath. "I'm a little embarrassed that I get so uncomfortable with ... medical situations ... and you just … You made it much easier. And for the record, that's a first," he said to lighten the mood.

"Well, you guys _are_ fun to tease," she grinned. "But … I was doing a complete record review and realized maybe _you_ weren't quite so deserving of my diabolical wit. In fact, in your case, it seems a little cruel."

"Oh," Mac flushed.

In her own effort to lighten things up before she left, Mel said, "I'll just have to save all my attention for Dalton."

Mac looked around, everywhere but at her face for a minute, then looked in her eyes, a little serious again. "Don't be too mean to him though. He's got his own issues …"

She nodded, then smirked. "Can I be a little mean?"

Now Mac grinned. "Oh hell yeah, he totally ghosted on me today."

Mel leaned back in the door. "Hey Jack, I almost forgot … because of how off duty I am …"

"Yeah?" came the question, sounding like he wanted to know what she was going to say less than a zero amount.

"Transfusion follow up. Nine a.m. I'll cc'd Matty on the reminder email."

Jack called out, "Gee thanks, Mel, that was real thoughtful of you." Much quieter, but still easily heard out on the stoop came Jack's voice, "Aw, man."


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N - Hey all. Hope everyone had a good 4th. Everybody still got all their fingers? Eyebrows? Awesome._

 _I've had a couple requests about this story and they are slowly percolating in my brain pan. I've got a lot of balls in their air, so if this gets complicated it may flow slower. Not too slow. I don't sleep enough for that. Although apparently I've started sleepwalking again (I did it a lot when I was a kid). If I could start sleep editing that would be great. But no such luck. A number of people have kind of started to ship Mel and Mac (and I didn't intend for that to happen, but I kind of do a bit myself). I may play with that because I like her and how she and Mac interact. This chapter leaves that door open (and also lets me give Jack a hard time, which I was dying to do). The second half is setting us up for some heavy angst/h/c/bromance and maybe setting up my next fic. After this I may take a few weeks off because I have loads going on with my book and a queue full of stuff to edit, not to mention that pesky sequel and on and on and on ... Anyway, keep sharing your thoughts, wants, ideas - that's what makes this so much fun!_

Jack paced around the waiting area a full five minutes (an eternity for him) and was talking himself into leaving and letting Matty holler at him when Mel materialized beside him. "Good morning, Agent Dalton," she said with bright cheerfulness.

"Oh, man, when I'm Agent Dalton you're in the mood to be mean to me." Jack's eyes flicked toward the exit.

It was taking every ounce of practiced cool she had ever cultivated not to crack up. She tapped a few things on her tablet without looking up. "Am I ever not mean? Have I somehow been derelict in my duties recently?"

He sighed, and she gave him a knowing smirk, one he was overly familiar with. "No, you're good," he said with a wry, resigned smile.

Finally she looked up. "C'mon back and let's get this over with, okay?"

This time when he sighed his cheeks puffed out like a kid, but she didn't think he realized he was doing it. "Over is good."

As he followed her down the hall, she thought it was amazing that a big burly sniper turned Delta operator who had fought in more wars and run more missions than you could shake a stick at could look quite so much like a seven year old who's just been told no dessert for a month. They passed by the small lab, where normally they would have stopped for a simple blood draw. "Where we goin', Mel?"

"Exam Room 2. Lab's busy this morning."

"Um … there's nobody in there." Not that he minded. Jesus, that place made him want to crawl out of his own damned skin; near as bad as being underground.

"There will be, in about five minutes. And frankly, we never know how long things will take with you."

"I'm not that bad," he huffed. But she noticed his relief when they passed the overly bright room with all its equipment, shinning surfaces, and patient chair that everyone joked was a prop from the _Saw_ movies.

"Says the guy I had to hunt down in the sub-basement range for his last flu shot. Even though said guy knows they're mandatory." She led him into the room and indicated a chair next to a little shelf where she deposited her computer and plugged it in to the waiting keyboard.

He sat almost reluctantly. "I forgot?"

"Mmm," she gave him an elaborate frown. "I think you know I don't like it down there any more than you like to come here. Since you had to suffer you wanted company." She put an oximeter clip on his finger and stuck a digital thermometer in his ear. "Guns are loud, and smelly, and I get to do the dirty work of patching you dummies up when you've been out playing with them."

He smiled and it looked fairly genuine as she entered a few numbers into the computer. "You sound as bad as Mac."

"We agree on at least one thing then." She stood and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. He was doing his best to keep a lid on it, but his eyes were following her, darting toward the door, and they had taken on a hard gleam Mel recognized now that she'd been out into the field; an operative in full threat assessment mode. Mac wasn't just covering for his partner being squeamish. Something had happened to this man. Something bad. Damn, now she had two of them to feel bad for. This week was just sucking all the fun right out of this ops team. Well, not completely. The timed taco eating had been kind of fun. She let the pressure off the cuff. "That's pretty high, Jack."

He glanced up at her from the point on the floor he'd been staring at. "Are you surprised?"

"A little. I mean it's even higher than usual for you, not just high for a guy your age."

"A guy my age …" he grumbled.

She set the cuff and stethoscope down. "We'll wait a couple of minutes and try again. Just sit for a few; feet on the floor, deep breaths, that sort of thing."

Jack's leg had started to bounce. "It's not gonna get better, Mel. Trust me."

She raised her eyebrows. "If it doesn't, we aren't doing this today. We have protocols to follow here. You'll have to come back in on Monday. And I'm off. Tim is the fill in." Jack paled. "You might think I'm mean, but at least you know I'm competent. I've never seen that man get a vial of blood with less than three sticks."

"Okay," Jack let out another exaggerated sigh. "Deep breaths. I'm on it."

Mel went about the business of prepping what she needed for the labs, watching Jack out of the corner of her eye. Now both feet were bouncing and he kept watching what she was doing while clearly trying not to. She pulled the tray over to where he was sitting and picked the blood pressure cuff up again. "Ready to try again?"

"I guess," Jack mumbled, knowing from the way he could feel his pulse in his head that there was no way it was any better now. In fact, it was probably worse. Watching what she was doing had not been a good idea, but, as Sissy had told him many times, hypervigilance makes its own decisions about what it wants to focus on.

This time she grabbed his other arm and made him rest it on the shelf. "Still high." She deflated the cuff, but didn't remove it, and looked around like she was thinking about something. "I know what we'll do," she said, grabbing some pamphlets off the nearby counter and handed them to him. "Focus on Mac. That always distracts you from your own situation."

His eyebrows drew together and he looked at her like she was crazy. "What, now?"

She indicated the papers in his hand with a tip of her chin. "Those are all about the repairs he had done and the recovery instructions and expectations. He forgot them yesterday. I was going to ask you to just pass them on, but since I have them handy … I know there is no part of your brain that doesn't want Mac feeling his best. And I'd just bet that part of your brain can take over enough to get your blood pressure down to where I can do my damned job and we can both just go about our day."

Jack sighed, but started reading. After a minute or two he was fairly engrossed in what he was looking at. _No wonder Mac is still having problems. Even if he is wearing the sling and doing stuff one handed, he's still doing too much._ Jack was vaguely aware of Mel re-inflating the blood pressure cuff. He thought briefly about how damned tight it was. My God, but that woman loved to torture him. Then he was distracted by the pamphlet again. Oh boy, was that kid gonna get a talking to when he got outta here today. He'd played Jack for all kinds of sympathy last night, and then compounded Jack's guilt about flaking out by offering to come in with him this morning. Right now Jack was glad he'd just told the kid to observe his medically-ordered long weekend and that he'd see him around noon, because if Mac had come, Mel wouldn't have been able to just give him this reading material. _Damned fool kid. He was gonna need more than cortisone if he didn't start toeing the line._ Jack realized Mel had just removed the blood pressure cuff. _Time to get down to business or get tossed out until Monday_ , he supposed. He started to put the pamphlets on the shelf with a sigh. Then he realized Mel's gloved hand was pressing a cotton ball in the crook of his arm and she was giving him a slightly amused grin.

"Keep your arm straight; put a little pressure on that."

"Um … okay."

She turned her back and moved some things around the tray, dropped a paper drape over it, turned back, secured a band-aid over the cotton ball, then threw her gloves away. "Leave that on for an hour … You can get out of here now, Jack."

Jack looked the most amusing combination of relieved and amused Mel could imagine. "I … Woman, did you just trick me out of my blood?"

"Bet your ass I did. Four vials of it, to be exact." She smiled at him, and there was nothing mean about it, but she was clearly pretty pleased with herself.

Jack knew his shoulders had lowered about six inches from his ears in the last two minutes when he realized he had nothing but more paperwork left to dread today, but he was a little wrong-footed by this sudden shift in Mel's approach. "I thought seein' me squirm was the highlight of your day."

She smirked again. "It _was_ when I thought you were just a big man baby." Her expression softened and she looked him in the eyes. She was going to be on their team from time to time, and she saw more of him and his partner than any of them liked when she was just working in the infirmary. There was no good reason for them to be at odds. That was all. "Mac said you had reasons. And he seemed to think they were extremely valid."

Jack was almost angry with his partner for a second. "What did he tell ..?"

"Nothing specific, Jack. You know he wouldn't." Jack relaxed fractionally. "He just … He asked me to go easier on you."

"Why'd you guys wind me up?"

"You bailed on him yesterday! He was pretty freaked out, not that he'd say so." Her frown was a hard line across her forehead.

Jack looked embarrassed. "I'd, um … had a rough night … I didn't think I'd be a terribly reassuring presence."

Jack thought he'd never seen someone look so sympathetic and judgmental all at once, except for maybe his mom. "You should have told him."

Jack nodded, chastened. "Thank you for being there for him."

"You're welcome. He wasn't angry with you. We just thought it would be funny to harass you a little in return. Besides, my plan only worked if you didn't know what I was up to."

He stood, shaking his head, a smile starting on one corner of his mouth, and the stress headache he'd had since his morning run finally easing. "I've told you a thousand times … But one word from Mac and suddenly …" He narrowed his eyes. "You've taken a shine to him."

Not the least bit flustered, she started cleaning up and gathering the orders for the lab work. "Of course I have. I like all of you guys. We're going to be working together more now that I'm a field backup. No reason for you to be miserable when we're assigned together, or here for that matter."

Now Jack was grinning, in a from-ear-to-ear sort of way. "Yeah, but you've got a brand new soft spot. You _like_ him."

"What are we in sixth grade, Dalton? I don't …" She frowned.

"Oh, this is real interestin' …"

Taking a page out of Mac's book, she threw him a half-playful glare. "Shut up, Jack."

He raised his eyebrows in the classic Jack-getting-ready-to bestow-his-wisdom look. "Well now, are you sure you want me to do that? Because I think …"

"You know what _I think_ ? These samples might be inadequate. Maybe you should sit back down while I go find another kit. Just in case." He knew she wasn't serious despite the practiced steel in her voice but he still blanched a little. "Unfortunately all that's left are the _really_ big needles."

"Shutting up, ma'am. You have yourself a real nice day!" Jack called over his shoulder as he hurried back to work. Apparently her soft spot only went so far, and picking on Mel in her own territory was not his best idea. Good to know. That didn't mean he hadn't stumbled on to something. But he made a mental note not to say anything to Mac or anybody else. Maybe he was wrong, maybe Mel had just found a deep vein of niceness under the miles of hard-assed nurse bedrock they were used to. But if he was right, the quickest way to send Mac in the opposite direction would be to try to play matchmaker. Even if Jack did like her. Which he didn't … Much.

0-0-0

"What do you mean it's gone? Somebody stole the boat?" Mac asked and, finally free of the sling after weeks of misery and motherhen-ing from his entire team, he picked up a couple of paperclips out of the bowl on the coffee table and began to fidget with them.

Matty steepled her fingers under her chin. She wished there was an easier way to break this to the team, to Mac, but there really just wasn't. "I mean the warehouse where we were storing Murdoc's boat so we could take it apart piece by piece is currently flaming rubble."

"How?" Jack asked frowning at the satellite pictures that Riley just got up on the viewing screen. "Sure as hell looks like a bomb."

"It was definitely a bomb; more than one actually," Mac interjected before Matty could say anything. He stood up and indicated a couple of different areas of the screen. "You can see blast patterns here … and here … lots of scatter. Some sort of accelerant, too. Riley, do you have thermals on this?"

She pulled it up. "Here it is."

"There! See the heat variations. The rear of the warehouse closest to the water burned much hotter than the front by the parking lot. And you can see the scatter patterns are irregular around the perimeter. It's asymmetrical because there was more than one device."

"I agree," Matty said levelly. "The team I've dispatched to the scene is aware and on alert for undetonated devices."

"I should be going with them." He glanced at Jack for support.

Jack gave him a nod. "Yeah Matty, why don't we go catch up with your crew now so Mac can take a look. He's clearly the guy for the job."

"Be that as it may," Matty said, holding up her hand to stop her agents who both looked ready to head for the door the minute the word 'okay' popped out of her mouth, whether in reference to them or something else entirely. "This guy, no matter how qualified he is, still has how many weeks of rehab before he can apply for field clearance?"

She directed her question at Steve who clearly didn't particularly want to answer and didn't look at Mac as he did. "Six to eight … Minimum."

"I need clearance to just go participate in an _investigation_?" Mac asked hotly.

"It's an active scene, Mac."

He swallowed hard, clearly biting back the first thing that popped into his head. "This is ridiculous."

"I can call in a favor at the Bureau and ask for your friend Charlie on loan, if that will make you feel better."

"Yeah, sure. Charlie would be great," he conceded. The he huffed a frustrated breath through gritted teeth. "I can't believe I'm … Is telling me all you wanted me for?"

Mac was clenching and unclenching his jaw, his frustration with still being stuck at the office (and knowing that if he'd taken care of his previous shoulder injury before this last mission he'd already be back in the field) stamped all over his face in a bright flush. Jack was glancing from Matty to Mac waiting for Mac's pent up energy to result in him saying something really dumb or for Matty's need to be the boss and try to mold them into agents of protocol to overcome her hard-won respect for their methods. Instead of either of those things, Mac held his tongue and Matty indicated his chair to him, looking at him with something closely resembling pity in her eyes. He sat down stiffly, schooling his expression to remain as neutral as possible and willing his jaw to loosen.

"No, Mac. If all I'd wanted to do was let you know that something went wrong with a part of the Murdoc investigation in which you were not actively involved because _you were injured_ in the course of that portion of it," she paused, giving him the look he had dubbed (but only told Jack) The Angry Babysitter. He just looked back, his face almost impassive, but one corner of his mouth did lift as if to acknowledge her unspoken reprimand about him thinking he needed to solve everything related to Murdoc or the Organization. "I would have texted you about it down in the robotics lab. Which has been, thus far, the only not strictly office related duty for which you are approved."

He nodded, a little more resentfully this time. There was absolutely no reason he couldn't be an active consult at this point, and he had the total lack of a sling to prove it. "Yes, ma'am," was what he said instead.

She nodded to Riley who brought up a number of images on the screen at the front of the room. A few looked like text messages, one or two like videos, a couple of sound files, and several that looked like different colors of static superimposed over each other. Riley finally tool over speaking. "I came in early this morning when Matty got word of the explosion near the docks and she had me start sifting through some suspicious chatter."

Matty took over again. "What Riley found was not only some activity concerningly similar to what we thought we put a stop to with the Architect's security breakthrough, but also a program imbedded in a recent Phoenix/CIA email that is not dissimilar to the Trojan horse virus used to implicate Thornton."

"Hey, yeah, where is Patty? She's been consulting on this." Jack was seeing irregularities in procedure he didn't like. Something was building and they weren't being given all the facts.

Matty acknowledged him with a single nod. She didn't like this either. And she especially didn't like that it was once again coming from Oversight. However, as far as they could tell Oversight was clean. Jim had noticed nothing that would have indicated any of them were anything other than legitimate and he had submitted to lengthy interrogations and multiple polygraphs to convince her of the veracity of his statements. "Thornton is working with James at the moment regarding this suspicious activity that relates to the work they had been doing before Thornton was arrested. They thought they had found a threat they could pull to unravel the whole thing. But, obviously, they lost it when the Organization attacked Thornton. James had been trying to reestablish Phoenix's link as Marc Butler."

"So we screwed it up when we found him?" Mac asked, frowning.

"No," Matty was adamant. "You broke up an unsanctioned investigation being conducted extra legally by what were essentially two rogue agents. The fact that they turned out to be on the right side, and we could keep them out of prison, doesn't change what they were up to."

"So why are we here then?" Mac asked, still looking uncertain about their actions to find his father or to try to apprehend Murdoc.

Riley spoke again. "This Trojan horse is really similar to the one Nikki used on Thornton."

"So, you can shut it down right?" Jack asked, his confidence in her abilities evident in his grin.

Riley nodded. "But the thing is, even though it was released recently … And there may be more like it. The programming signature is incredibly distinct."

"Nikki," Jack growled. Mac glanced at him and then his eyes were fixed on Matty again.

Matty was thinking those warm blue eyes of MacGyver's that were currently trained on her were cooling by the second. He already knew what she was going to say. "In the past few months since you apprehended her in DC and incarcerated her at our East Coast holding facility in Delaware, we've had several different teams interrogate her about her activities including one using … less conventional … questioning methods." Matty waited for an interruption, but none came. She did feel the temperature seem to drop another few degrees though. "This new information makes it all the more critical that we find out what the Organization may have in their possession to use as a technological weapon against the US intelligence community."

Mac spoke calmly. "You want me to talk to her."

Matty didn't quite nod. "Oversight would like you to try to get that information, yes."

"So I'm authorized to go out into the field for this? By Oversight?"

She could have been wrong, but she thought he looked almost hopeful. "I'm afraid that I can't authorize that, Mac. We've played a little fast and loose with the rules as it is these last few months and with Murdoc's fate still up in the air, I can't let you go out there at less than 100%, even if we think it's a simple recon or intel gathering gig. Okay?"

Mac gave a frustrated shrug and opened his hands, the frustration coming back into his voice, not in degrees, but full force. "What am I supposed to do then? Facetime her and hope she still thinks I'm so cute that she swoons and gives it all up?"

"Well, given how she still speaks of you to anyone who will listen," Mac shuddered. "That might just work. However, I felt this was a 'bring the mountain to Mohammed' kind of a situation."

She couldn't quite read his expression.

"She should be here in about three hours."

Mac got up abruptly. "I'll be in my office. Let me know when she gets here."

He didn't look at Matty, but Jack caught the ' _you know where to find me_ ' glance Mac threw him on his way out. Jack glanced at Matty. "You know I love a good movie quote and I've got a nice store of 'em for just about any situation."

"I know they're usually _Ghostbusters_ or _Die Hard_ , but go on."

"I don't like the one that's springin' to mind right now."

"Which is?"

Riley got up, standing between them, and supplied, "I've got a bad feeling about this."


	21. Chapter 21

Jack was waiting in the hallway when Mac came out of the interrogation room carrying the manila folder he went in with, but with a few important additions. "You okay, buddy?"

Mac just started walking and Jack followed. "Did you see all of that?"

"Didn't take my eyes off you guys until thirty seconds ago when you got up."

"Then what do you think?"

"That you're probably pretty damned far from okay. But I know you don't like it when I make assumptions about your feelings."

Mac glanced at him and actually gave him half a smile. "He _does_ listen. Miracles might actually be real."

Jack elbowed him. "'Course miracles are real. I keep sayin' so. And hey, we're alive, so they must be, right?"

Mac pushed the button for the elevator. "I'll concede the need for further data collection before rejecting your hypothesis."

"Do you think the key she gave you is real? The list of programs?"

They stepped onto the elevator.

"Maybe. She's just so …" Mac took a deep breath that was just a hair away from being a shudder. "Detached from reality. It could be real, or it could have been her way of prolonging the interview … Did you see her face when I walked in the door?"

Jack nodded and put a hand on Mac's shoulder, pleased when he realized he'd unthinkingly patted the left one and Mac didn't flinch away. Good to know he was finally as pain free as he'd been claiming to be for weeks. "I did. And it gave me the heebeejeebies somethin' awful. It was …"

"Hunger," Mac said plainly. "Need. Obsession. I never … she was always so … I guess in retrospect, not normal, but she was …" Mac floundered around his mind for a word and couldn't come up with one.

"Sexy?" Jack supplied as they got off the elevator. "Because I never noticed you getting much past the fact that a gorgeous leggy blonde thought you were cute."

Mac flushed. "I guess I didn't look too deep into our relationship."

Then he almost laughed. He didn't know why he was embarrassed. It's not like Nikki was the only woman who'd ever entered into his life … that way. Okay, pretty close. But still. He pictured her eyes when he walked into the room and everything put a cold sinking in the pit of his stomach left him.

Then he went on. "All that stuff about how the Organization values her, that she has money stashed all over, that they could break her out … the 'let's run away from all this' stuff … how I had to let her protect me … and then, as I was leaving." Mac stopped as though he never intended to go on, like he hadn't just stopped talking in the middle of a sentence.

Now they were standing outside Matty's office. "Mac?"

Mac shook his head, opening the door. "Later," he mumbled quietly.

Matty was sitting behind her desk, with Riley on the other side, both of them looking almost overly busy at their computers when they walked through the door. Mac put the folder down on Matty's desk and cleared his throat. "I, uh, I got the code key, and a list of programs and basic specs from her. I don't know how valid they are. After resisting teams for months, I didn't even have to work for it. It was … unsettling."

Finally Matty looked up. "I imagine it was. I observed remotely." Mac's eyes dropped for a second but then met hers again. "Riley will get to work on this now."

Riley got up and grabbed the folder, not quite meeting Mac's eyes, but she put her hand on his arm, gave it a gentle squeeze, before sitting back down and looking at the folder's contents with silent intensity.

"Good. Do you want Jack and I to oversee Nikki's transfer back to …"

"No. But I appreciate your willingness to do this today. I know seeing her was not easy. Why don't you and Jack go home. I'm not saying you can't come back in tomorrow," she hurried to add when Mac looked almost stricken. "Just take the afternoon to relax. You know there's no focusing right now."

Mac nodded, with a small, forced, smile. "Probably true."

"And I'm not trying to make today any worse for you, but I'm reassigning a security detail to you again. So if you think you have a tail on the way home, you do. Dark Blue Suburban, California plates. Okay?"

He nodded. Jack was eyeing him with growing alarm, but Matty got Jack's attention by saying, "I know you're staying there most of the time anyway, Jack, but I want you to plan on being there on a semi-permanent basis, as personal security. Not a sham on paper this time, but for real. I'll send briefing materials to your tablet later. Understood?"

"You know my priority mission, Matilda. Nice to have it on paper all official like." He glanced at Mac. Mac gave him another small smile.

"Any arguments, Mac?" Matty asked, almost sounding like a dare, but softening it with her concerned expression.

He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. "No ma'am."

"Alright. Good. Get out of here. We'll see you in the morning. If there are any developments from this new intel you acquired, I _will_ call."

"Thanks," he nodded.

Then he just turned and left, knowing Jack would follow. They headed for the parking garage at Mac's self-selected very purposeful pace, but neither of them said anything. Jack could only imagine what Nikki had said to Mac on his way out to trigger this kind of reaction. Mac, needing to feel normal again now that his sling wasn't a Matty-enforced requirement, had been driving in everyday. Jack was texting Bozer that he and Mac weren't going to be there at closing time and asking if he could get a ride. Bozer texted back that he was planning on staying at Beth's anyway. She'd gotten a kitten and they wanted to imprint on it together. Jack just rolled his eyes. "Hey, bud," he said casually. "Want me to drive?"

Mac got his keys out of his jacket pocket and tossed them to Jack. "You're the bodyguard, man."

"You okay with that?" Jack asked, cautious. Similar arrangements had gone badly, emotionally anyway, in the past.

Mac nodded as he got in the Jeep. "I actually am. Tonight anyway."

Jack started the car, glancing at his partner as he pulled the door shut. Not even knowing where to begin unpacking the expression on Mac's face, Jack decided on his frequent loosen-Mac-up tactic of saying something ridiculous. "What the hell did she say to you between you getting up and me meeting you in the hall? She claim to be like psychically pregnant with your alien mind baby or somethin'?"

Mac sighed, but gave Jack an affectionate glance, appreciating what he was trying to do. "She said that if I didn't leave with her, go to the Organization with her and join them, they're going to kill me. That it's already in motion."

"Jesus."

"And she's crazy, Jack. If I ever doubted it, well … you saw. But she didn't look crazy when she said that. She didn't sound crazy either. It was like that time in Somalia when we thought we'd gotten Sadiq away from that warlord without tipping anyone and then she pulled up the satellite of the airport and she looked up, so afraid … she was so sure …"

"We were gonna die."

"Yeah."


	22. Chapter 22

Jack did his best to keep things as normal as possible for Mac over the next week. It wasn't all that difficult since the perimeter security detail was headed up by Milton, and having Todd come in the house at random intervals to talk was pretty much like any other day since they'd become teammates. And Jack often passed on a cold one in favor of water even when he was just hanging out. He could tell that even though Mac took the threat Nikki had revealed seriously, having three other guys with him on his morning run was not something he cared for, and just knowing there was a whole team outside his house, that they were frequently going over his car, monitoring incoming and outgoing calls, and looped in to the security cameras he and Bozer had installed after the first Murdoc incident last year, was definitely wearing on him.

At work it was not much different. Since he was still on restricted duty, he was in various offices or one of the labs and having Jack with him was only unusual in the lab. Jack thought Mac sort of liked explaining what he was doing, even though he pretended to be annoyed with Jack's endless questions. If the kid ever did walk away from this life, Jack thought he would make a hell of a teacher. But despite everyone's efforts to keep things feeling normal, and in spite of Mac's dedication to not pushing the limits of shoulder and maybe being less than honest about it this time just to get back out in the field, his tension was palpable by the time they reached the ten day mark with no new news of what Nikki might have been talking about and no breakthroughs on the programs she named. It was like watching clouds gather.

They were nearing the two week mark, when the storm Jack had been anticipating finally broke. Mac had a frustrating morning in the robotics lab. He thought he had figured out a way to counterbalance the heavy processors in their AIs head with a center mass gyroscopic weight which meant they might just get it ambulatory and he'd gotten pretty excited about it. Mac and Beth had exchanged several extremely nerdy high fives when they went over his math and even gotten Boze to emerge from where he was testing a new adhesive for prosthetics that he hoped would produce less skin irritation. Jack hadn't seen Mac that animated since their trip to the cabin. His favorite lab nerds had even worked out a reasonable mock up to test the concept on a RC scale model, about which they'd all been ecstatic. Then one of the extra security detail guys had come to check whether or not the team was planning to leave the building for lunch like they had been doing to break up the monotony and, not expecting Tiny Sparky, accidentally kicked the model under the lab table, effectively shutting down the test until it could be repaired. Don, the guard in question, saw the look on Mac's face and apologized like he thought the blond likely to start randomly hurling fireballs at him, but Mac had calmly told him that it was okay. It was their mistake for not hanging the _Testing in Progress_ sign on the door. He added that no, he had no designs on leaving the building, so the team didn't need to go out ahead of them anywhere.

There wasn't much more to be done until the model was repaired, a job Beth took on since she'd built it to begin with, so Bozer went back to work on his adhesive, and Mac sighed, checking the clock and reminding Jack that he had a physical therapy session to get to. When Mac emerged from Medical two hours later after a long stint in the gym with the physical therapist and then a brief progress evaluation with the doctor, Jack was waiting in the hallway. He didn't care for the look on Mac's face, or the way he was letting his shower damp hair hang down to conceal it, one bit. Mac made a conscious effort to brush his hair out of his face when he noticed Jack's scrutiny and fell into step beside him, heading for the elevator. "Hey Jack. You didn't have to come meet me. I can definitely find my office on my own. It's where I'm spending most of my time these days." He'd tried to make it sound like a joke, just an offhand comment, but his bitterness was unmistakable.

"Oh, I know you can, brother. I just came down to see how things went." He decided not to parse words right now. "I'm guessin' not so great?"

"Yeah, I swear all PT's are secretly black ops interrogation specialists. My shoulder doesn't feel too bad, but the rest of me is just sore … like regular hard workout sore. Basic training sore," he grumbled.

"Well, you landed Stan. Man is pretty … _dedicated_." Mac snickered. They got on the elevator and headed back to Mac's office. "So, how did it go with the doc?"

Mac made a face. That's what the look was about then. "He says I'm still only 85% of where I ought to be. More PT, more frequent checks, blah blah. No to any kind of field work. At all."

They got off the elevator. Jack knew what was eating him. "How long did he say?"

Mac practically growled, "At least another month! Which is ridiculous! It feels fine. I'm lifting where I was before, my grip is fine; so I've lost a little range of motion. So what? I could be working again."

"Mac, buddy," Jack tried to slow him down with a hand on his shoulder. "You are working, man. Just different work for a little bit, right? You're still doin' good work that can help people. You're just not having to disarm bombs or skin your knuckles on anybody's teeth to do it for a minute … You'll get there, bud."

Mac gave him a look that said he knew Jack was perfectly correct, but that the taste of saying so out loud was not something he could tolerate. He nodded instead. "I need to write up the test for the AI … then … You wanna get out of here? I just can't grind anymore paperwork out today."

"Yeah, absolutely, Mac. We can stop and grab some dead cow to char on the grill if you want, maybe find you that snooty beer you like, watch the sunset from your deck, like we were back on vacation."

Mac actually smiled. "That sounds awesome."

Then they turned the corner to his office and Jim was standing by the door, his hair freshly buzz cut down so all the previously dyed color was gone and there was just salt and pepper fuzz, which was, Mac noticed, more salt than pepper. "Hey Mac, can I talk with you privately?"

"Sure. Hey Jack, give us a minute?" Jack nodded quietly and stepped aside, eyeing the senior MacGyver with renewed mistrust. He didn't like the reserved tone of the man's question to Mac at all.

They moved into his office and Mac closed the door. He knew Jack was waiting just outside, and for some reason he was glad about that, though he couldn't have said why. Almost without thinking, instead of sitting in one of the chairs that would have made the conversation feel more social, Mac sat behind his desk. His father sat down in front of it, leaning forward with a tentative expression on his whole face. Mac leaned back in his chair when he realized he was sitting up tensely and opened with a casual, "What's up?"

Jim cleared his throat. "I wanted to let you know, before the rest of the core team is looped in … We, that is Patricia and I, we believe we've found the avenue through which the Organization was able to gain access to _Bethlehem_ , which may lead us to why they did it and, well, _who_ did it. They've been interested in biologicals for some time. There has to be a reason. Chemical weapons are easier to manufacture and deploy. There's more to all of this than we've probably considered. One of the programs that Nikki named when you interviewed her led us to the information."

Mac nodded. "That's good. Progress is progress, right?"

"Indeed. But … I'm going to be going back under cover to pursue this avenue of investigation."

Mac's face instantly creased with worry … and something else. "In the _field_?"

Jim nodded. "I was cleared this morning. Murdoc shooting me in that leg was the best thing to happen to my career as an operative since I got burned."

Mac licked his lips. His father, his arthritic recently gun-shot father who had believed he'd never work in the field again, who had hinted how nice it would be to get a place near Mac's just in general, but especially in the event that a special someone, a cushy teaching job, and - fingers-crossed - grandchildren ever came along, he'd be nearby. Mac had laughed that off, but … leaving … going into the field? Before _him_. That was the part that really rankled at the moment, Mac told himself. Not that his father was leaving. Again. But that a man almost twice his age, who had been visibly limited and recently shot prior to his new stint at Phoenix headquarters was medically cleared and going, not just into the field, but undercover. And he was looking at another month of desk duty at least. _Goddamnit_.

"That's great," Mac offered, through lips that felt numb.

"The assignment is strictly need-to-know of course."

"Of course," Mac gave a single nod.

"Matty gave me permission to speak with you before I left. Because I didn't want …"

"It's fine." Mac offered a reassuring smile that his father gratefully accepted. If Jack had been there, he would have seen the truth behind it. "I appreciate you letting me know. It's been …" Mac could hear a tightness entering his voice and he purposely relaxed, using every biofeedback and mindfulness technique he could recall from his training in fooling polygraphs and resisting interrogation. "It's been good to get to know you again."

For the first time, Jim looked genuinely regretful. He had been so pleased to resume his work, he hadn't realized how difficult this might be. "Mac … I'm sorry for …"

Mac looked away, his damp hair falling over his face, and this time he left it. "Please … Don't?" It wasn't a statement, more of a plea.

"I'm not sure when I'll be leaving. It could be a couple days … Could be an hour. It will depend on Matty and …"

"Good luck," Mac interrupted. Jim realized that if he didn't leave, Mac was very likely going to break down. All the telltale signs from his childhood were there; the hair in his face, the redness of his cheeks, the almost imperceptibly slow breaths meant to conceal his feelings.

"Thank you." He paused, and then, selfishly he knew, couldn't stop himself. "I wish things had been different and when I come back …"

Now Mack looked up, his eyes swimming pools of sky, his jaw hard. This wasn't about his confinement to the office, and he knew it. "I wish they'd been different, too." He didn't want to say the words bubbling up from inside that twelve year old boy who'd had his birthday ruined, or even his earlier six year old self who'd had to face saying goodbye alone, but they came anyway. "I wish they'd been different, too. I wish you hadn't lied to me so much. I wish you'd been there when she died. I wish you'd been around to notice all the bruises, the headaches, the upset stomachs that happened every day I had to be the scientist's lonely kid at school. I wish you'd been there; ever. For anything. I wish you'd come back when Gramps told you about my knee or when you saw me hanging off that cliff in the paper. I wish you'd come to my graduation or tried talking me out of dropping out of MIT. I wish you'd called me when you thought joining the Army was a bad idea because you knew what that life was going to be like instead of sending me the letter that implied I was too intellectual to be a soldier." He stopped as he felt a single hot tear trail down his face. "I wish a lot of things. But wishes aren't worth a damn. And the past is over with. We are where we are. And actions are what matter."

His father's face was absolutely stricken and part of him didn't even feel badly about it, the childish part. The other part, the man he'd become didn't want that, not even for a minute.

"And you're taking the right ones now."

Another tear spilled and finally he dashed them away with the swipe of one hand. He got up and went around his desk. His father rose, looking uncertain. Mac extended a hand and Jim took it, not knowing quite what else to do. Mac gave a short nod, made brief eye contact. "I meant it; good luck. If … when you come back, maybe we can unpack all that other stuff."

Quite unable to help himself, and knowing it was as selfish as anything else he'd ever done, Jim pulled Mac into a brief hug and then stepped quickly away. "I'll be in touch when I can. I'm not disappearing on you again."

Mac glanced up from the spot in his carpet he was studying. "I know."

His father turned to leave, had his hand on the doorknob when Mac spoke again, not quite adequately concealing just how close to actually breaking down he was. "Hey … Be careful out there."

"I will. And you'll be back out there, too. Before you know it. You do the same."

Mac just nodded. Jim was almost out the door, and Mac spoke again, realizing he hadn't really said it, but needing to now, in case, just in case, it was the last chance he got. "I wish it had been different … But …" _Last chance, Mac_ , he said to himself. "I love you anyway, you know."

"You too, Angus," Jim bit out. And he slipped away down the hall, before he broke down and both up them couldn't be put back together.

Jack had heard the very end of the exchange, was doing his level best to get his own emotions under control before he went in to see Mac. He heard a crash from Mac's office as he was wondering how long to give him and ran inside only to find Mac calmly picking up shards of desk lamp off the floor. Mac glanced up, his face perfectly calm, if overly pale. "I knocked it off the desk," he said in a perfectly normal tone.

"Yeah, that happens," Jack said, tamping down on his concern, visibly, at least. "Leave that be, bud. I'll call Custodial to take care of it. You already had to spend half your day in Medical for PT, you don't want to finish it up with a bunch of stitches."

Mac rose from his crouch on the floor. "Good point."

Jack made the call as Mac shrugged into his jacket. When he got off the phone he studied Mac for a long moment. The poor guy was just leaning against one wall staring at the framed periodic table on the other, looking like he was making chemical equations in his head and visualizing the reactions, something Jack knew he did when he was past the point of stress. It was something he did when dealing with the aftermath of flashbacks or when he was in severe pain. Right now, Jack suspected a little of both. "You still want to get some beer and stuff for the grill," he asked softly.

Mac looked at him like he was just remembering that he wasn't alone. "How about some takeout?" he asked, knowing that at least if he didn't eat anything, restaurant food would be salty enough to keep in the fridge until he was hungry again.

"What kind you in the mood for, bud?" Jack asked, wanting anything they did tonight to be Mac's idea, and remembering that he hadn't had lunch, claiming that if Stan worked him like he usually did he'd just throw up anyway.

"Mexican?" he shrugged. "And maybe some limes. I've still got that bottle of mescal you gave me when I got my official honorable discharge."

"That really expensive shit with the worm?"

Mac nodded, smiling just a little, and wondering if tying one on and maybe even consuming the mystical worm at the bottom wasn't just what he needed to push the feelings, that were crowding out thoughts, out of the way. It had worked pretty well when he'd found out Nikki was really a traitor. "That's the stuff."

Knowing that was probably a bad idea, but not about to tell the man his business, Jack just slung an arm around his partner. "Whatever you need from me, man. You know I've always got you."

Mac swallowed hard. "Yeah."


	23. Chapter 23

In spite of Mac's intentions to get comfortably numb, two shots of tequila on an empty stomach was enough to convince him that it hadn't been a great plan to begin with. He didn't miss Jack's approving look as he put the bottle back under the sink where it had been living for years. He'd been pretty adamant that he wasn't hungry when they first got home too, but the way the couple of drinks had the world swimming around him pushed aside his earlier objections and he wound up gunning three street tacos and a pork belly burrito. Jack concealed a grin when Mac wondered aloud if Mel liked burritos because this was the best burrito north of the border and Mel could eat tacos like an underfed, overtired Delta. Jack just casually suggested that maybe the next time he saw her, Mac should offer to buy her one. Mac had grinned, the slightly dopey grin of the more than half looped, but Jack was glad to see it. Whatever had happened between Mac and his father in Mac's office earlier hadn't been good for the kid, but maybe if he found the right sort of distraction, say of the 5'4" curly haired curvy variety that was more than a match for the guy's own stubbornness (and at least as clever, Jack thought ruefully, remembering with slight fondness and more than slight appreciation how she'd made his last trip to medical probably one of the least stressful encounters with pointy objects he'd ever had there through sheer MacGyver levels of trickery), maybe he'd just move on from it.

Jack thought he'd been well on his way. Mac didn't offer anything of the conversation other than his dad was going back out into the field and had stopped by to say goodbye, and Jack knew better than to push. But after the couple of drinks, dinner, some sunset bullshitting on the back deck, and then a long overdue viewing of Deadpool, Mac had seemed like he was at least headed back toward and even keel. Despite Mac's insistence that it was ridiculous for Jack not to use his room that was only a few doors away anyway since there was a whole security detail outside, Jack assumed what Mac had dubbed his 'bodyguard bunk' on the smaller sofa closest to Mac's bedroom door when Mac finally half dozed off on the couch and Jack had roused him and insisted he go to bed, reminding him that sleeping scrunched up in the living room was not ideal for his recovery. Mac had grumbled sleepily about that recovery and Jack had promised, as sincerely as he could, that they'd work on his range of motion together and make Doc Foster eat his words about a whole additional month on the bench (not that he minded nobody taking potshots at either of them, truth be told).

The haunting howl of miserable agony that came from behind Mac's door several hours later that pulled Jack abruptly from his deepest sleep in a blink told him that nothing was as it had seemed when Mac had closed the door just after midnight. Jack was on his feet in an instant and turned the knob to go in and either wake Mac (the likeliest scenario since that almost animal sound spoke of a night terror rather than a conscious vocalization) or comfort him (it wouldn't be the first time sleep had battered down all the kid's usual barriers). He was stopped by a locked door. He frowned for a second but it was quickly forgotten when Mac let out another blood curdling scream and Jack heard a thud of at least one body hitting the floor and then the loud shattering of glass. Jack didn't even pause to think about what he was doing before he had the bedroom door kicked in and had thrown the light switch, counting on his own fast visual recovery time to give him an advantage against an attacker.

Instead of what he expected, which was an assailant and Mac fighting for his life, Jack found the broken glass of Mac's mirror everywhere, the blond sprawled on the floor like he'd been thrown there, his friend's hands bloody. Jack heard other security team members moving through the living room and since he could see Mac now really waking up, he called out, "Hey guys, everything's good. Y'all can head pack to posts."

Recognizing Jack's voice and accepting, for now, his reassurance that this wasn't a security incident, the team receded back outside. Jack went and knelt next to Mac, helping his friend sit up slowly and draping his arm of his shoulders as the leaned back against the footboard of Mac's bed. "Hey, brother. You musta been havin' one hell of a dream."

"Yeah," Mac offered shakily. "I guess I was."

"What about?" Jack asked gently, wondering exactly what could have cause sleeping Mac to attack his mirror. It wouldn't be the first time either of them wandered in the throes of a night terror or flashback, but it was the first time in years, either of them had been hurt by it.

"Kandahar," Mac answered, too quickly, but Jack didn't press.

Instead Jack said quietly, "I think you might have hurt your hands a little, Mac. Wanna come with me and we'll wash 'em off and take a look at the damage."

Mac frowned for a minute, like he wasn't quite sure what Jack was talking about, then he reluctantly looked at his hands. There was too much blood to be able to tell what he'd done to them. His breathing started getting ragged and he almost started clenching them. Jack had been down this road himself, with other teammates, and on at least one other occasion, with Mac. So a firm hand on Mac's arm and a stern, "Don't you go hurtin' yourself now. Your dreams already did a number on ya," was all it took to bring Mac back to reality. He helped Mac up and led him into the adjoining master bath. After Mac ran his hands under the water that Jack helpfully turned on, both men relaxed a little realizing it wasn't quite as bad as it had looked at first. Like head wounds, hands liked to bleed. Still, even Mac's most irrational thoughts could not deny that he probably needed some medical attention when Jack said so. He'd just nodded, and started looking around for his shoes. Jack stopped him, telling him to have a seat on the bed and then wrapping both Mac's battered hands in a towel. Jack tipped him a smile, hoping to ease the tension in Mac's whole body, or at least whatever part of it was caused by a fresh injury and not whatever had pushed his dreams into such damaging territory. "You sit tight. Le'me make a call. What's the point of having a team medic, if they can't help out the team at home, too."

Mac appreciated Jack effort to spare him the bright lights, hard exam tables, and generally anxiety inducing atmosphere of Medical in general, in favor of a friendly facing helping him out in his own home. Jack kept his eyes on Mac as he dialed Steve's emergency number. When their medic answered, Jack quickly explained what had happened. "Damn," Steve breathed. "Lanney's working the Emergency Department tonight and Dev's sleeping over at a friend's." Of all the nights for the perfect storm of Steve's wife having the overnight and their eldest and usual babysitter being off doing what fifteen year olds did, why did it have to be tonight?

"Hell," Jack grumbled. "Alright, man, sorry to wake you. I guess I'll take him in to Medical."

"He really doesn't want to go, huh?"

Jack sighed. "He actually hasn't said boo about it, which worries me more than having to bribe him or threaten him, honestly. It musta been one helluva flashback … or worse."

"Hmm," Steve hummed and in the quiet that followed Jack heard the soft gurgle of a baby. That's why Steve had answered so fast. He'd already been up with Zeb anyway. Doing some mental math, Jack guessed their favorite doc was currently dealing with the fun of teething. He'd walked the floor with a few nieces and nephews on trips home for that very thing. Poor Steve. Although, while part of Jack was sympathetic, another part was faintly jealous. Steve disrupted his thoughts by offering, with a jaw cracking yawn, "Why don't you bring him over here? I've got everything we need to clean him up and lay in a few stitches. I don't have much for pain relief, but I'm not above breaking out my birthday scotch."

Jack gave a grateful chuckle. "Brother, I would buy you a replacement bottle in a heartbeat, but I can hear you've got your hands … correction, arms … full over there. I'll take him in. He'll be okay."

Steve quickly offered another alternative. "He doesn't want to go in there tonight. Collins is the doc and freaking Tim is his nurse. That's a recipe for Mac not willingly walking in there for at least six months. Stacy is the coldest fish I've ever met and Tim is just bad at his damned job … I'll call my backup. Mel won't mind. She loves the odd field assignment."

Jack stepped into the living room, out of earshot from Mac. "Oh, man, I don't know. I think maybe that would be bad. I think … they might have a thing for each other. Not that either of them would notice that it's reciprocated or anything. Just, Mac doesn't need … and Mel doesn't want …"

Steve was blunt, knowing what it took to make a relationship work when one of the members of it had seen combat. "Look, Jack, I appreciate you trying to protect them, but say you're right, say they do 'have a thing' … Don't you think they both need to know … It's okay to fall apart in front of someone you love, and it's okay to keep loving someone after that's happened … And look, Jack, between Mac's past … the War and his other stuff, and what we all do … tell me you think this is gonna be the last time his dreams ever kick his ass. But you gotta switch to video, so you can look me in the eye when you say it."

Jack sighed. "Alright. Call her. Text me if she can come. If I don't hear from you in ten, I'll just take him in though."

Jack wasn't even sitting down next to Mac when the text came through that Mel was on her way with her field kit. "Hey Mac." Mac looked up, now more embarrassed than upset or hurt. "Um, Steve was gonna come over, but there's nobody to watch the baby."

"Okay. I'll get some shoes on," he sighed.

"No, man, you don't have to. He's sending Mel over to patch you up real quick."

Mac sat up a little straighter, looking to Jack like the kid who's just gotten detention for someone else's wrongdoing. "Is she … um … already on her way?"

"Yeah, bud; she's hurrying right over."

"Oh," Mac said quietly. Then without a word, he got up, towel and all, and headed into the living room to wait.

Jack just closed the bedroom door as he followed Mac into the living room, thinking Mac was probably, unnecessarily, embarrassed by the mess, and joined Mac on the couch, texting the rest of the security detail minimal details along with an order for Melody Sullivan to be permitted immediately upon arrival. When she got there, she came in with what Jack thought was, for her, a very subdued demeanor. Steve had obviously briefed her, bless him. She moved slowly, kept her voice quiet as she greeted them and just sat down on the coffee table facing Mac, placing her bag unobtrusively on the floor by their feet. "Hey, Mac. Rough night?" she asked, resting her forearms on her thighs and making no move to touch him.

He met her eye with a small smile. "Wish I knew. I know I had a bad dream and then … Jack was picking me up off the floor. Guess my bureau mirror musta pissed me off." He forced a short laugh, but he almost felt it. Almost.

Mel gave him a small smile of her own. Jack read an awful lot in it. And if he'd already started to like … which he hadn't, not really … it raised her even further in his esteem. "That happens more than you'd think with guys like you." She waited a beat, until her reassurance that this wasn't unusual clearly penetrated his façade. "Is it okay if I take a look?" Her question had none of the usual pushiness of medical personnel.

Mac nodded, holding out his towel-draped hands. "Of course. Steve called you to."

She rested his forearms on her thighs, while his hands were still wrapped, and then once he looked marginally comfortable, she unwrapped his hands, concealing her wince at the cuts she saw there. There weren't many, and none were particularly worrisome, but a number were deep enough to need attention. Mac seemed to pick up on her concern even though she tried every trick she knew to tamp it down. "You need to stitch these?" he asked, with unusually open trepidation.

Mel caught his chin in her hands and forced eye contact. "No, Mac. Don't worry so, honey. You didn't hurt yourself all that badly. You just had a bad dream is all." Jack could only see her profile but he almost wanted to cry himself at the compassion he saw in her face. And often when nurses called you honey there was something almost parental about it, but her words just held compassion and affection. "I can glue you up real pretty. No stabbiness involved." When Mac's eyes flashed the mistrust common to those who've heard 'this won't hurt a bit' too many times, Mel gazed into his tired eyes again. "I promise. Wouldn't-join-the-girl-scouts-honor."

Mac chuckled in spite of himself. "Okay. I'll hold still for it. Got-kicked-out-of-the-scouts'- honor," he smiled at her.

She wrinkled her nose at him, moving to the side and getting him to rest his hands on the coffee table. "I can't lie; the glue is no fun, Mac. You want something for the pain?"

He tossed her a quick smile. "I'm good, Mel. But … thanks."

After Mel sorted him out, grinning at intervals when he said something funny, or brave, or just clever, she asked if he thought he could go back to sleep on his own and raised disapproving eyebrows when he said 'sure' in a dismissive tone. She gave him a practiced glare. "Angus Henry MacGyver. Are you or are you not going back to sleep?"

Jack grinned a little as Mac shrugged. "I'll try."

Mel smiled at him, affection, fatigue, and understanding all forming her expression. "Would you take something to help you get some sleep, if I suggested it, Mac?"

"Ummm?"

"No shots or anything. Just a pill I think you should take. Steve had me bring it."

Mac glanced at Jack, then at Mel. "Um, I guess; if you guys …"

"We do," Jack and Mel said together.

"Okay. Thanks, you guys."

Mac accepted the pill and a glass of water without any resistance. He let them tuck him into bed, and pretended he was asleep when Mel smoothed his hair back.

She got up to leave a short while later when his regular breaths became honest. "So … he had a bad dream?"

"About the war," Jack asserted.

"Sure," Mel nodded. "Okay. Call me if you need me, Jack," she said calmly, pretending she didn't know that life was never that simple.


	24. Chapter 24

_A/N - Hey all. Here's a little chapter that is mostly fluff, but I needed some fluff to set up for some angst ... you know how it goes. It got totally sidelined by a migraine again yesterday. Turns out releasing a book is stressful. Who knew? Anyhow, it may be a few days before I update again because spending a day in a dark room isn't good for productivity and I'm on a deadline (those are super fun, said nobody ever) and if I don't get some editing done, I do not want to be the one to take that video call. Unfortunately, I'd have to be, so I'm just gonna do my damned job and avoid the trouble if I can. I hope you enjoy._

When Mac finally got up, it was barely still actually morning. Jack had cleaned up all the glass and even taken the frame from the mirror off his dresser. How he had done that while Mac slept was a mystery, but then again, Mac thought, he hadn't even asked Mel what the pill was, just gratefully accepted the promise of dreamless sleep. He almost didn't want to look at his hands in the harsh light of day, but discovered that they really weren't bad at all. Only two of the cuts had really needed glue. He had to assume Jack had called them out of work, and he felt his face heating up when he realized that with the security detail and Phoenix medic involved, his 'incident' was definitely reported and on Matty's desk today. He heaved a long sigh and headed into the living room. He was still alone in the house except for Jack, which was a relief. Jack was on his phone in the kitchen, leaning against the counter. "Yeah, he's still out cold … No, no more problems … Slept through me cleanin' up in there this morning … What did Matty ..? You didn't ..? I appreciate that. Todd took care of security keepin' it on the DL, but I … Alright, we'll see you tonight then. Thanks, Mel."

Jack was putting his phone back in his pocket when he realized Mac was now sitting on one of the stools on the other side of the kitchen counter. He looked somewhere between guilty and startled so Mac just gave him a small smile. "Morning, Jack." Then he glanced at the clock on the microwave. "Or afternoon. You know, whatever."

"Hey, buddy. How you doin'?" Jack gave him a short searching look, but then turned to get Mac some coffee, before his expression got overly concerned.

Mac sighed, but it was a good-natured sound. "Like I got in a fight with an inanimate object mostly." Jack put the coffee down in front of him and Mac didn't miss how his friend's eyes followed his hand as he picked up the cup and brought it to his lips. Mac shook his head, his expression mostly fond. "I'm good, Jack. Hands are a little stiff, but it wasn't bad and Mel did an awesome job."

"That's good, dude. You scared the hell out of me. And then your door was locked, and …"

Mac interrupted, frowning. "I never lock my bedroom door."

"You musta been sleepwalking, man. It's happened before."

Mac nodded, a line forming across his forehead. "That's always weird. Makes me uncomfortable."

Jack nodded. He'd done it himself once or twice and it was extremely disconcerting, especially when you heard all about what you did from someone else. "Extreme stress can …"

"Yeah, I know." Mac interrupted, draining the rest of his coffee cup and then getting up to fix himself a second one. Jack started to get to his feet to insist that he could get that for him but Mac his raised an eyebrow, the one that said I double dog dare you to make a bigger deal of this than it is. "So since you seem to have the rest of the team in your pocket," Mac paused for a small smile, "what did you actually tell Matty? … And please say 'nothing she'll ever ask about'."

"What do you take me for? Remember after our little ' _woohoo we're still alive party_ ' after Zahray?"

Mac took a deep breath. _Was Jack just making a casual reference or was that little name drop because_ … _had he said he was dreaming about Kandahar?_ … He thought he had. He looked at Jack for a long moment. There was no speculative searching in his eyes so he wasn't prodding to see if Mac would talk about his dream, just fond memories of one hell of an unauthorized shindig and the slew of excuses Jack had to come up with afterward to explain some property damage and a squad full of guys with a few new 'injuries' that had escaped notice when they came back in from their latest run. And run was a good word for it. He just grinned, "Yeah, you were smooth. I still think he knew you were full of shit though."

"Probably, but this time I didn't give our boss enough info to shoot holes in a story, mentally or otherwise."

"What did you ..?"

Jack just patted Mac on the shoulder. "Personal day, brother. We haven't just taken a day for no reason in ages. And hey, she called us in on Cairo Day and look how that ended up. She owes us a few and I said so."

Mac gave him a grateful glance as he got up from his seat. "Thanks, man. Hey, I'm gonna change and hit the trail for a little. You wanna come, or should I shake somebody from the detail loose and make 'em suffer?"

Jack didn't actually feel like going for a run. He'd gone on one at about four this morning to get some nervous energy out of his system so he could pretend that he was worried sick about Mac. Todd had obligingly sat on Mac's couch while he went too, but Mac never moved a muscle. "Oh, no, you don't have to bother those guys. I'd love to do a couple miles. Just remember you got an old man with you when you pick a pace, dude."

"No hang-in-there run this afternoon then?" Mac said with an evil grin about what had been just about everybody else's leave favorite form of PT in the Army, but which Mac had sort of secretly always loved.

Jack glared at him, "I swear if you start sprinting the hills today, you won't have to worry about hiding a fight with a damned mirror from Matty, 'cuz it will all be covered up by the fight you had with an angry Delta, son."

Mac just laughed as he headed off to get changed. "That angry Delta would have to catch me first."

0-0-0

Jack's first impulse had been to call the rest of the team and beg off from their planned cook out for the evening, but Mac seemed to be looking forward to some company so Jack just let it ride. Although he suspected it was Mac's way of distracting both himself and Jack from going over the night before – and he'd already called and spoken to Sissy so he was adamant that it was over and done with. While Bozer had been staying at Beth's (with a few security people of their own that they were not necessarily aware of), the couple planned to come over for dinner, since they'd missed the most recent gathering of the team. It was getting a little late when Bozer called Jack and asked him to play chef by cooking the meat and he promised to make up for it with a pile of side dishes and extra beer. And maybe some dessert. There was a fair amount of smoke rolling around the deck, since Jack was a low heat and damp wood chips kind of a griller once he had a good sear going and Boze wasn't there to screw it up, and there was a pleasant number of people between the deck and the house since some of the peripheral security folks had become honorary invites to the semi-weekly family meal (mostly the guys Mac dragged on his runs). When Mel got there, she was a little surprised by the crowd, although Mac had said 'barbeque' when he texted her. She'd expected someone in his own head after last night. What she found was Mac leaning on the railing talking with Riley about a game she was writing. Riley gave her a smile and casually moved away as Mel joined Mac at the railing.

"This is a great view."

He glanced at her. "It is. Can't believe I scored this place. You should've seen it when I bought it though. It was a dump. I'd come home on leave … and Bozer needed a place to live and I had money from my grandfather … it still had this view and I needed something to keep busy with when I was stateside, so I said screw it and paid way too much money for a shack. I came home for good not too long after that, thanks to Jack, and I worked on the place obsessively for six months."

She laughed, but hadn't looked at him yet. "You? Immersing yourself in a project just to not sit still for five minutes? Now that sounds … exactly like you." He just chuckled and took a sip from his water bottle. It did not escape her notice that most of the rest of the attendees were drinking beer. He was an obsessive researcher, so she figured he'd probably read that alcohol could exacerbate sleep walking. She decided to see if it was conscious avoidance or not, and turned to him. "I'm gonna grab a beer. Want one?"

He met her eyes now. "No thanks. I'm sticking to water tonight." Mac went back to looking out at the city.

Mel was back a moment later. No one was overly close, so she said quietly. "I picked up your prescription for you. It's on your bathroom sink."

He glanced at her again. His call to Sissy had included a concession he swore he would never make. He was going to try out something to handle the dreams. Conscious he had a pocketful of coping mechanisms for his trauma, but he reasoned, in sleep he was at his brain's mercy, and if the clever bastard was going to go picking fights while he was down for the count, he had to do something about it. "Thanks. Jack would've gone, but I dragged him on a run and nearly killed him … so, he had a nap instead," Mac chuckled. He was sure there would be payback at some point, but it had totally been worth it.

"You're welcome." She smiled and took a sip of her beer with a sigh. Mac finally processed that she was still wearing her scrubs. Today it was deep purple that made her auburn hair look much redder than usual. She grinned when she saw him noticing. "Don't worry. I'm not bringing work to the party. It was just an awfully busy shift at ye olde day job. One of the teams busted up some organized crime thing and there were bullet grazes and broken noses and hands aplenty. I was there a couple hours longer than I planned on. I couldn't change and make it here for dinner so …"

She'd been over here in the middle of the night, then pulled what was probably a very taxing shift. Not that she was complaining. Still, he was kind of tired, too, so he could empathize. He tilted his head toward some recently vacated Adirondack chairs. "You want to sit?"

"Sounds like heaven." She followed him over and contentedly stretched out tired legs, giving him an embarrassed grin when he noticed her hideous rainbow tie-dye crocs not quite concealing _Adventure Time_ socks. "They're super comfortable," she began.

Mac shook his head. "You are looking at the original function-over-form guy. I live in running shoes and boots. And most women's shoes are just dumb …" He was thoughtful. "Except maybe for stilettos. Those could easily be repurposed as a weapon."

She laughed, long and probably loud, at that. "Only you would think of that, Mac." She noticed that while he was engaged in their conversation, and looked pretty relaxed, he was absently running the opposite thumb over the worst laceration on his hand that ran all around the base of his thumb, nearly to the wrist. "Is it bothering you much? Want me to take a look?"

He gave a rueful grin. That was a quick turnaround from Friend Mel to Nurse Mel, not all that different a shift than when Steve went from ' _Hey buddy_ ' to Dr. Rodgers in a blink. That's what you got for being friends with medical types he supposed. "It's fine. Honestly. Besides, Steve stopped by earlier, baby and all, and made me let him go over them. It was almost worth it to watch Jack trying to entertain Zeb while Steve was in full doc mode."

A smooth subject change. He was good. "I'll bet. Did Jack make the baby cry or vice versa?"

"Jack was amazing with the baby," Mac laughed. Then he looked almost sad. "That's one guy who should have had some of his own."

Hmm, 'dad' stuff probably not the safest topic, she thought. "He's not that old. Maybe he still will." Smooth subject change of her own, "All I see is Jack grilling meat. Is this just because you guys have been batching it for weeks and you've forgotten how to feed yourselves like humans?"

"Nah, Boze promised to bring a bunch of … Speak of the devil." Mac had turned at the noise of Riley cheerfully calling out a greeting as Bozer and Beth came through the front door with bags of food and a big box that obviously held a cake. Mac got up to head inside to say hello and let out a low whistle. "They finally went and did it."

"Did what?" Mel asked getting to her feet and trying to figure out what he was seeing that had a ridiculous grin spreading over his face.

Mac didn't say anything, just headed inside, with his steps quickening as he went and immediately pulled Bozer into the most enthusiastic hug Mel thought he had ever seen. She followed slowly, confused. Then Mac was hugging Beth too and Riley squealed, "No way! Seriously?" and was hugging Bozer herself.

Bozer was laughing. He turned and opened the box of cake and it was a lovely cream colored and yellow buttercream arrangement with their names inside of two intertwined rings, with flowers and bells all over it. "How did you know, man? We were gonna make a big announcement at dessert."

Mac was grinning from ear to ear. "The light caught Beth's ring when you put stuff on the counter."

"Damn, Mac, sometimes I forget my best friend is a spy who notices everything." There was general laughter around the room. It was nice to be with a group of people who just knew who you were, nice to not have to pretend to be something else, Mac thought briefly before Bozer went on cracking him up again. "And before you start giving me a lecture about warlords and hidden economies, that's an ice diamond from Canada."

Mac grinned, "Do you want one about how you spent three months salary on neatly stacked carbon atoms not dissimilar to what Jack is using to cook our dinner at the moment, or should I save that for later, too?"

"Don't ruin our moment with science, bro!"

As the small crowd started passing on their congratulations and got wrapped up in Beth showing off the ring her new fiancé had designed, Bozer leaned against the counter next to Mac. "I figure this goes without saying, but, you'll be my best man, right?"

"Do I have to wear a tux?" he teased.

Bozer elbowed him. "You can show up in jeans and that beat assed leather jacket so long as you stand up with me, Mac!"

"Deal." He gave Bozer another hug instead of shaking hands to seal it. He knew Jack had looped Bozer in, but bless them both neither had brought up his minor injuries or his sleepwalking incident. Although Bozer had probably started telling stories about his teen years when Jack spoke to him. Mac cringed inwardly. "Have you set a date?"

Mel was coming over to offer her congratulations now that the crowd had begun to thin and people had started to resume their pre-engagement sort-of-announcement conversations. So she caught Bozer's answer. "Beth and I were thinking Cairo Day, man. None of us want to be anywhere near work on that day ever again."

"Cairo Day? What happened in Cairo?" Mel asked with genuine curiosity.

"Stays in Cairo, sister," Jack joined the conversation smoothly, setting a giant platter of burgers and dogs down on the counter and peeking over at the cake slightly obscured by Mac and Bozer's counter leaning. "Now what did I miss while I was out there doin' all the work?"

Mac answered with a grin, "Seems like we're losing a roommate permanently, Jack."

0-0-0

The evening had turned into a party, full of music, and reminiscing, and generally pleasant distractions. By the time everyone was leaving, Mac actually thought he might sleep from simple exhaustion. Mel had bowed out early, exhausted and foot sore from an overly long shift in the infirmary and wanting nothing more than to change into a t-shirt and yoga pants and sit on her couch with Spot watching something completely innocuous on television. She had gotten Mac alone for a minute and looked over his hands. He'd grinned and said he didn't need another babysitter in his life. She'd given him an elaborate frown. "I'm not fussing, I'm checking my work. You like to know your work held up after you walked away don't you?"

Mac had rolled his eyes. "Mostly I'm just happy about the walking away part, usually."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, but Mac recognized the expression as entirely amused. "I imagine you are. You guys call if you need anything. I'm off tomorrow, so …"

Mac hesitated. "Um … Jack already told Matty we're taking Friday as a personal day. I believe he said planning a bachelor party was the excuse, so my hands would have a chance to be a little less noticeable if I run into her at work because I am NOT dealing with that explanation on top of everything else (thank you by the way for not …) Anyway … If you're off … Wanna come over and go for a run and then maybe get some takeout for lunch? We tried these crazy pork belly burritos the other night and I thought of you after the way you went after those tacos."

She tilted her head to one side, contemplating him and the casual offer for a moment. "The only way I'm running is if there's something chasing us. But burritos sound amazing. Noonish?"

They'd agreed on the time and Mel made her way to the door, glancing at Mac rejoining the group on the sofa where Bozer was telling Jack emphatically that there was to be no bachelor party. Whatever had caused last night's sleep disturbance seemed to be the furthest thing from Mac's mind. That was probably good, she thought as she headed home.

Mac was thinking the same thing as he was lying in bed later. It had been such a pleasant evening, felt very far removed from the night before, which … no, he was good, he was fine, and he'd taken his prescription so tonight would be fine, too, and he was pleasantly surprised that the stuff didn't actually make you drowsy, just got in the way of the parts of his brain currently trying to screw with his waking life. Mac was dozing off feeling pretty good about that, thinking that he was going to give Bozer a bachelor party, just not the annoying gross drink-to-much-and-be-sexist kind. Laser tag maybe, or a film festival, or maybe a little more classic, but an old Hollywood bar crawl to the places the stars back in the day would go. Then the dream was back, in all its horrible glory, and Mac was awake and on his feet with a shout before Jack was through his open door. Mac slumped back down on his bed, flipping on the bedside lamp and quickly running his roughened hand over his eyes. Jack sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Kandahar, huh?"

Mac shook his head. Maybe saying it out loud would chase it away. "Not really. But you knew that."

"You wanna talk about it?"

Mac shook his head, but got up to go into the living room anyway. "No. But if I'm going to keep waking you up, I guess you should know why."

When they sat down, Mac on the corner of the couch, and Jack in the chair next to it so he could easily see Mac's face, Jack guessed, "Dreamin' about your dad?"

"Sort of," Mac shrugged. "And my mom. And Murdoc. And … and you."

Jack leaned forward to give Mac a reassuring pat on the arm. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, since he'd had his own slew of nightmares about Mac after Lake Como, but just because he'd confessed those to his partner, didn't make opening up any easier for the tightly contained blond sitting on the couch. "Lay it on me, brother. You know I'm here for you."

Mac nodded. "You are in the dream, too."

He took a shaky breath.

"That's when it gets bad."


	25. Chapter 25

_A/N - Hey guys. I worked my eyeballs off editing a novel today, so I rewarded myself with this. I know I said it would be a couple of days, but I'm a big believer in rewarding good behavior and boy was I good! You wanted details of the dream and some angst. I hope this delivers. ~ J_

Mac had turned off all the lights but the dim lamp nearest the television, and then walked quietly into the kitchen in his bare feet to make tea, offering Jack a cup, which was declined politely; Jack couldn't quite figure out Mac and Bozer and their tea thing. To him tea, especially the herbal stuff, was like a nice drink of water somebody had ruined by putting grass clippings in it, but he didn't say so. When Mac sat back down, he did so deliberately next to Jack so they would have to consciously turn to face each other. He wasn't up for eye contact at the moment. Jack just leaned into the cushions so he could see Mac's profile decently and listened with growing queasiness about the things his friend's brain had been putting him through. Jack had told himself that Mac had come a long way in not erecting mental barriers that could create a dangerous labyrinth in which he could become lost. But hearing his dreams, and thinking about how absolutely normal, happy even, Mac had seemed earlier in the evening, Jack knew he still had a long way to go.

Mac had been reliving some of the most terrible moments of both his childhood and adult life, but with the disturbing wrinkle that Murdoc was always a player in the scene, and often Murdoc was accompanied by Nikki (a detail that Mac almost omitted). The day his mother had gotten her diagnosis; Murdoc appeared as the doctor, but was also a judge looming over them delivering her sentence as Death by Cancer. He appeared in a similar role as Mac's brain put him through donating bone marrow to his mother, and in the dream, instead of sleeping peacefully next to her afterward, he'd been dragged away crying and screaming by a blonde nurse with ice for eyes … that Mac reluctantly admitted was Nikki after several moments of struggling with the thought. Then Murdoc was the undertaker coming to take his mother away, with his creepy smile, and stiff white shirt, and dead eyes, who had collected Mac instead and put him in a box and locked it and left him to suffocate in the dark. Then his father was leaving, and this time Nikki was driving the car that took him away and Murdoc had been the neighbor whose bushes he'd hidden in and in the dream the neighbor had hauled him out of the bushes as thrown him into a hole in the ground so he couldn't even run home to his grandfather. Then out on that ledge when he was fourteen, Murdoc had been one of the first responders and he'd grabbed Mac and instead of helping him into the safety harness that rescued him he'd pulled him away from it and thrown him to the rocks below. Mac said quietly that he'd fallen forever and thought when you landed in a dream you woke up, but he hadn't; he'd just lain there, broken on the rocks and watched himself bleed to death. There were other small things, some big things where all the players were part of things that had happened to Mac and Jack together, but Mac glossed them over. His chest was getting tight talking about it, and right now he mostly wanted to go back in his room, close the door, and cry like a little kid until he fell back asleep, and maybe stay that way for a week, without Jack or anyone else being the wiser. If he finished just telling Jack, he could at least do the cry and pass out thing, even if it only lasted until tomorrow. And once Jack knew what had caused the sleepwalking he wouldn't be quite so deep in big brother mode, doing things like asking Mac to keep his door open, Mac reasoned.

He felt Jack looking at him and ventured a hesitant glance at his partner. Jack put a warm hand in the middle of his back and Mac felt his control slipping another notch. "Jesus, Mac. No wonder you …" He paused seeing the swimming blue eyes glancing at him. The kid wanted, hell no, he didn't want, but he _needed_ , a good cry, and that was just the beginning, but Jack knew better than to say so. He'd gotten Mac to let go that way before, but the kid's defenses were just as clever as the rest of his mind so the same tricks barely ever worked more than once. And Mac was dancing away from whatever it was that had really been the trigger. Jack decided it was best to offer him an out at this point. "Do you want to keep telling it, Mac? You don't have to do it for me, and I don't want you to try if it's going to make it worse for y …"

"He killed you, Jack!" This time Mac's breath was unmistakably a sob, but he got on top of it quickly with a slow deliberate breath. Jack moved a little closer and put an arm around him, just staying quiet and letting Mac decide what to do. Mac took another careful breath that turned to a shudder at the end, and he turned to face Jack fully, eyes so wide with the memory that he looked like someone who'd been sleep deprived for a month or doped out of their rational mind, both of which Jack had seen throughout his career … as methods of torture. And, he believed that's what his friend's memories combined with his imagination were conspiring to do at the moment. Torture him. Finally, Mac went on. "In that cave … In my dream …" he added carefully, as though if he didn't say, it all of time might change and make it real. "When he told you guys to choose, when I wouldn't, you didn't because of course you didn't because _you're Jack_ ," Jack's breath caught a little at that simple assertion so full of trust and admiration, but he kept it quiet, not wanting to interrupt Mac now that he'd started to unload. "But my dad did, my dad just tried to save himself and Murdoc killed you, they _both_ killed you, and then Murdoc shot me anyway, in the chest, and I was in the water and it was cold and I couldn't breathe, but I could feel the water getting warm with my blood, and …"

Mac was crying now, and furious with himself for it. He knew some of the dream came from memories of Lake Como that he hadn't, that he _wouldn't_ deal with, but he wasn't about to examine that now. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop the hot flow of tears that had been threatening since … since way before these dreams, if he was honest … for too long, but this wasn't something he'd wanted to do in front of anyone. He felt like he'd been wearing his heart, shit, his guts, on his sleeve since he'd first started working with Sissy and it was still unnatural as hell, even with Jack, who he knew was a safe person, the safest person, but … goddamn, he was just still used to being on his own for working though this stuff. Even letting Jack in this deep was so new as to feel foreign. He went on anyway, knowing he was getting harder to understand. "And then, and then I was in my office with my … with Jim … and while he was talking to me I looked up at my door and instead of being able to just barely see your shoulder off to the side like I could that day, Murdoc was there fogging up the glass, and Nikki was with him, and he had this picture of you that he just kept tearing into a pieces, and my d … Jim got up to leave and Murdoc took out a knife, and it was your knife, the one nobody knows about that you keep in your left boot."

Jack gave him a quick hard look at that point. Nobody knew about that back-up knife – a ceramic piece he'd had specially made because it could even get past airport security. He'd had it out in Mac's presence exactly twice, and both times his friend had been unconscious. It also did not escape Jack's notice that Mac was very deliberately calling his father _Jim_ again. Abandoned once more, thoughts had to be reformed. Jack stopped him. "And he used it on your … on Jim."

"No," Mac shook his head, tears flying off his face, unnoticed now. "Jim walked right passed him to leave and then Murdoc came at me with it, right there in my office."

Now Jack was starting to really see how Mac had wound up getting physical in his dream. "And what happened then, bud?"

"I got up from my desk and I fought with him, but my arm was all tied up in that sling. And then Nikki came to help him … and they were too much to just fight off together so I wanted to get them out of my office so someone would see what was happening, so someone could help."

"And then what, Mac?"

"You were gone … So no one did. I think when I ran at them to try to shove them out my door … I think that's how I broke my mirror."

Jack just gathered his friend into his arms and held him through his reluctant tears, his choked sobs, thinking to himself that for one he wondered if Mac had given all that up to Sissy on the phone and if he hadn't if he would give Jack permission to tell her (because there was a wealth of stuff there she could work with to help) and for the other, while he could never hate any part of Mac's brain because it was part of Mac and he honestly loved his partner more than his own life, he could hate the people who'd given him those memories that were so easy to corrupt into horrors, and he could hate the two people who now lived in Mac's imagination as well as somewhere out in the shadows of the world or in a Phoenix holding cell, and if he had half a chance he'd put an end to the ' _not in Mac's imagination_ ' part of both of them. "Yeah, well," Jack squeezed Mac around the shoulders. "Good thing I'm always there then, ain't it?"

He felt Mac's shoulders shake a little, but it was in a sort of sobbing laugh. He lifted his head from Jack's shoulder and looked at him, too tired and too wrung out at the moment to even feel ashamed at how wet he'd left Jack's t-shirt, but enough himself to need to go get a tissue and wash his face. Jack didn't try to stop him. Mac would be done talking or anything else until he was comfortable and felt back in control. He glanced at Jack as he headed into the bathroom, "I guess it is."

0-0-0

Mac was quiet for a while after he came back. Eventually, he sighed. "Sorry I woke you," without looking at his partner.

"Are we gonna have to have the ' _stop apologizing for stuff outside of your control_ ' talk again?

"I just feel so stupid. I've dreamt about war, about missions gone bad, hell about my parents, and even Murdoc and Nikki before and it's never … But roll it together and I fall apart like a kid."

Jack put a hand on his shoulder again. "No, you dream like someone with PTSD, who's looking down the barrel of a lot of triggers at the moment, and who is currently sidelined by an injury he got during some of that garbage. You didn't fall apart, Mac. I've told you before, and I thought you listened, it's totally necessary to not be okay once in awhile. You bottle it all up and you'll probably get in another fight with more bedroom furniture."

Mac almost smiled as he scratched absently at the long cut around his thumb. "I don't bottle."

"Um … you do. You always have. But you're getting better … You tell Sissy any of this stuff when you talked to her?"

Mac shook his head, no longer looking at Jack. "Not the specifics."

"You planning on it?"

Mac glanced his way, then out the window. "I don't know; maybe."

Which meant no, of course. Mac had said it out loud once and had no intention of doing so again. "Do you want me to tell her?" he offered quietly.

Mac just shrugged. He didn't place much stock in dream analysis. It struck him as entirely too subjective. He got up and walked to the fridge for a water. "Want anything?" he called.

Jack shook his head. That was Mac speak for ' _I'm done with this conversation_ '. "I'm all set, man."

He watched as Mac downed the entire bottle and then refilled it from the filter built into the door. Thirst like that was a fair indication that their time in Afghanistan had made an appearance in those dreams, too. That must've been the 'other stuff' Mac dismissed as unimportant. Mac came back over and stood just off to Jack's side, looking at him, but not quite into his face at the moment. "I … um … I think I'm going to try to go back to bed."

Jack looked up at him, catching his eye and holding it with his gently encouraging gaze. "You sure you're okay to do that? You won't keep me awake if you want to crash out here on the couch."

Being not entirely alone and wedged against the cushions actually sounded like a really good idea. Mac smiled slightly and nodded. Then he went and got his pillow and comforter and curled up on the long couch, where Jack didn't have his own pillow and blankets. Jack got up off the end and moved back over to the smaller couch where he'd been sleeping. He reached to turn off the light, then stopped. "You want the light left on, bud?"

Mac's face emerged from under his blanket. "You don't mind?"

Jack lay back down and covered up himself. "Course not. You'd leave it on for me, if the roles were reversed. Which they have been," he reminded his friend. "More than once."

Mac curled up again, and Jack heard a muffled, "Thanks Jack."

Jack was almost dozing off when Mac spoke softly again, "Hey Jack," he said quietly, testing whether or not his partner was still awake.

"Yeah, bud," Jack answered, doing his best not to sound sleepy.

"All the stuff Nikki said … Do you think she actually knows how to get to the Organization?"

"I dunno, Mac. She might. You think she'd tell you?"

"She might. If … But Matty would never go for it though."

"Wouldn't go for what, Mac?" Jack sat up to look at the lump of blue blankets that was currently all that could be seen of Mac.

"I was just … I don't want to just sit around here waiting from them to come after me. And if Murdoc survived we know he'll be back so it won't just be coming after me, it'll be you, too."

"That's probably true, but I don't see …"

"If I could get Nikki to believe I wanted to join them, if she really knows … I could maybe go undercover and …"

"You're right, Matty would never go for it. And neither would I. That's too risky with a threat like this. Look what happened to your old man. Let him try to fix this mess his involvement with them got you into." Jack's anger that Mac had been abandoned once again bled through into his tone, and was only tempered by the fact that it was precipitated by his desire to put an end to the threat to Mac, supposedly anyway.

Mac sighed, and now he sat up too, looking at Jack. "I don't trust him, Jack … I wanted to, but … It's always about him and the more he says it isn't the more sure I am that he's lying."

Jack nodded. He thought Jim wanted to be a better man than that, but Jack just wasn't sure he had it in him. He waited a beat and then gave Mac a very intense look. "You trust me, don'tcha?"

"Yeah. Yes. Of course I do." Mac looked back, uncertain.

Jack gave him a crooked smile. "Then trust me when I say we'll find a way that doesn't involve you taking that big a risk."

Mac sighed, but nodded. Still, he wondered … "I think I could pull it off, Jack."

"I never doubted that for a second, bud. You're the best there is. But they want revenge on your … on Jim for trying to bring them down when you were a kid. No matter what kind of offer they might make, I still think it would be to just use you against him. Who knows what they might do with you? And you've suffered enough because of your parents already. Okay?"

Mac sighed again and got back under his blanket, pulling it partially over his head again before answering. "Okay. You're not wrong." Jack started to lie down again when Mac said, "I just want to get back to work, Jack. I want to do something to help end this." Then he almost whispered, "I feel so useless stuck in the office."

"And I'm bettin' that's not helping your dreams and stuff either." Mac mumbled something unintelligible. "We've got all weekend to talk it out. After we get a little shut eye, we'll call Steve and see if he has any ideas about gettin' you back out there sooner than Foster will consider it."

Mac was quiet.

"Mac? Buddy?"

A soft murmuring sound came from under the blanket. Jack smiled. Mac had already managed to doze back off. Good. Fresh eyes on the problem in the morning. So long as Mac didn't have another nightmare, Jack thought. Then he sighed and got up to make himself some coffee. He'd just stay up so he could wake Mac at the first sign of trouble. He could always take a nap tomorrow when Todd, who he trusted more than any other member of the daily detail, was back on duty. Coffee in hand a few minutes later, Jack sat down just past Mac's feet on the big sofa and started playing a game on his phone.


	26. Chapter 26

_A/N - Hey all. Finally coming up for air again from my editing duties. Now on to the real work of my summer which is selling my book and writing the sequel. My betas are getting restless because, as you may have noticed, I love me a cliffhanger. Not a lot of action here, just some friendship stuff and a little building of tension for what comes next. Definitely a few more surprises for this one bouncing around the old brain box. Hope you enjoy! ~ J_

"Well," Steve said as he breezed into Mac's office, booted Jack's feet off the spare chair so he could sit down, and tossed a manila folder with a green form sticking out of it onto Mac's desk. "Foster's pissed at you."

Mac gave a rueful smile and shook his head, closing his laptop. "Usually," Mac quipped. The twenty or so paper clip sculptures littering his desk just from this morning told Steve his teammate had about had it with desk duty and when he'd gotten Mac's permission to talk with his therapist, it became very clear that anyone who knew him, professionally or otherwise, could see this injury and the long recovery from it was damaging to his mental health. Also, when Jack had called him in and he'd examined Mac's shoulder himself over the weekend, he could find no obvious reason for the complete restriction. Don Foster just didn't like having his professional judgment questioned. Steve had done his best to soften the perception that that's what was happening, saying that Mac had confided his frustration as a teammate and Steve was just following up with his colleague to see what might be done; he also said he knew how Mac could be, working closely with him like he did now, but he didn't think this was his usual avoidance or misdirection. "But, more importantly, did he listen to you and sign the form?"

Steve shook his head and Mac's face immediately fell. Steve held up one hand, "Hold on. He said he _might_ be willing to sign it ..." Mac's face brightened again and Jack grinned. "If …" Mac's smile was already on its way back to a frown. "Look, he thinks you're trying to bypass protocol. He'll consider revising his timeline if you come down and ask him yourself, talk over why you think you're ready, and let him take another look."

Mac rolled his eyes. "Right now?"

Steve grinned. "If you'd like to get the hell out of this office, yeah."

Mac got up, picking up the folder with the still-depressingly unsigned form in it. Then he leaned against his desk with another sigh.

"You good, Mac?" Steve asked.

"I hate doctors."

"All of us?" Steve raised his eyebrows with amusement.

"Present company excluded … Most of the time." Steve laughed, and Mac gave sheepish grin. "But Foster is kind of permanently on my shit list."

Steve got up to go deal with some paperwork of his own. Reducing his hours to spend more time at home with his family while Mac was recovering caused it to pile up in irritating ways. "I can understand why; especially since you're kind of on his too. Stubborn patient plus stubborn doctor equals a minimum of two frustrated people, usually with the byproduct of a frustrated nurse or two. But if it makes you feel any better … I think I've already got him convinced."

Jack got up, too and put a hand on Mac's shoulder. "Let's go, bud."

Mac elbowed him as they started down the hall. "I need an escort to Medical? I asked for this."

Jack grinned. "No. Although you're probably worse than me for avoiding that place … Strike that, you are definitely worse." He chuckled at the mostly playful dirty look Mac threw his way as they got on the elevator. "But I am still your personal security guy … And there are advantages to having me tag along."

"Such as?" he asked, but he was grinning as he realized what Jack was up to. He didn't need a one on one detail in the building, unless they felt like it.

"Such as, Don Foster will do anything to avoid seeing me since the day he decided sneaking up and stabbing me was a good idea. Things'll go a lot smoother for you, I'm guessin', if I just go stand there with my arms folded and look annoyed."

Mac smiled. "I don't actually know how good you are as individual security, but you are one hell of a partner."

"Don't you forget it," Jack clapped him on the back as they got off the elevator and Jack put on his best cold operator face to glare at the disagreeable physician with.

0-0-0

"Good to have you back, Double-Oh-Science," Matty said with a smirk as Mac passed her the appropriate form, looking about as smug as she thought someone as humble as he usually was could manage to look.

Mac flinched, "That's not a thing now is it?"

She smiled. "I'm trying it out. At least you've graduated from Baby Einstein. You almost look old enough to shave today."

He shook his head and sat down at the table, closely followed by Jack, who was chuckling and mumbling, "Double-Oh-Science," under his breath.

Mac gave him a genuine glare. "No. Jack … _Jack_ , I mean it."

"Alright, alright." He shook his head, still smiling. "Now that we're back in the game, what's the plan, Matty? And where's the rest of the team?"

Matty looked down at her computer and then back up at her two operatives. "The rest of the team is tying up some loose ends related to moving back out into the field." Mac grinned at the words into the field, but sobered as he took in Matty's serious expression. "I'm glad you've recovered from your injuries, Mac, but I need you to know that thinking you were going to just head back out willy-nilly on the doctor's say so was putting the cart a bit before the horse."

His eyebrows drew together. "Meaning?"

"Meaning, the threat Miss Carpenter made us aware of relative to the Organization is credible. We've discovered seven different contracts out on you in the last three days."

Mac's expression could be classified as skeptical at best. "And? People wanting me dead is not exactly new, Matty. Staying not dead is just part of the job."

She smiled, almost chuckling. "And you're mostly very good at that. But these are not hits. These are capture and deliver … still breathing is the only caveat to the condition whomever is hiring has attached to these … extremely lucrative is the best way to put it … offers. In fact several of the offers seem to indicate a certain amount of your suffering will be worth a bonus."

Mac leaned back in his chair, running his hands over his face and through his hair, obscuring his expression for a moment, while Jack was so far forward on his seat and his expression so alert he seemed prepared to bolt out of it. Jack asked, "And has anybody picked up these offers?"

Matty nodded, glancing at Mac whose face was screwed up into a thoughtful expression. "Three takers so far. One of them is going by the name Conrad Donnelly, an alias we have successfully tied to Murdoc when we investigated the Dan Connors identity."

"So the bastard is still alive," Jack growled.

"It would certainly seem so. At the very least, someone is operating within the network of identities he established for himself."

Mac swallowed, "Conrad is Nikki's mother's maiden name. You think that's a coincidence?" he asked, glancing around almost hopefully.

Matty was sympathetic. "I think assuming anything about this case is a coincidence would be very dangerous at this point."

Mac was nodding thoughtfully, no longer looking quite so put out about Matty putting the brakes on field missions outside of this case. "So, I'm still on this mission, then? Because if I have to keep playing desk jockey I'm going to wind up losing my mind."

"That was going to be my next topic." She punched in something on her tablet. "You're cleared for the field and that's where your strengths are. But right now, I'm going to ask you to keep in local."

Mac's frown said he wanted to interrupt, but he just nodded.

"I'm going to need you around Phoenix for something I want to try."

She looked so hesitant, the hair started standing up on the back of Mac's neck. "Which is?"

"I think Nikki knows more than we have been able to discover through the methods we've tried so far … And you've played her brilliantly the last two times you've met, in DC and again here at headquarters."

"You want me to interrogate her again, because … I'm willing … It's just not ever been my strong suit … I'm better with machines than people … Which based on how you're raising your eyebrows, you figured out a long time ago …" he trailed off sheepishly.

"I know I told you I would never use you as bait. And I won't which is why you'll keep security and when you're in the field there will be extra back up. We know they're gunning for you and they want you alive … I don't think that bodes very well for you if they catch you."

Mac cleared his throat, "No, I guess it probably doesn't."

Jack was a little more animated. "So they damned well better not get anywhere near him, Matilda."

Matty nodded. "Settle down, Dalton. I don't intend for the Organization or anyone else to get their claws on our boy genius." Mac had the fleeting resentful thought that they'd probably still say boy genius and call him kid when he was forty. Then that was tempered by the thought that if they didn't bring down the Organization he probably wouldn't live that long, and whatever life they let him have would be something he wouldn't want to make it though anyway. "That's why I'm not going to use him as bait or let him too far out of my sight for the time being. But I would like to ask Mac to be an incentive, to be willing to talk to Nikki, to spend small amount of time with her …"

"I can't pretend to still want to be involved with her, Matty. I can't do it," his voice carried some heat. "I … that's too much."

She held up her hands. "And I'm not asking you to. But she's just twisted and obsessed enough that I think we could use that to get her to spill everything even if all we gave her was pictures of you reading the newspaper. It's a technique I've seen used before, to great effect."

Mac glanced at Jack who looked about as thrilled about that as he felt. Then he looked down at the floor for a few minutes before meeting Matty's eyes again. "I'll give it four weeks. If nothing breaks by then, I want to go after the Organization myself. No more of this passive crap. I can't take much more of it."

Matty gave a little nod. "Four weeks. I'll arrange it."


	27. Chapter 27

Time slowed to a crawl. The missions their ops team was assigned to amounted to surveillance, or at least that's what it felt like to Mac. So he got to diffuse a few bombs. That was hardly even interesting anymore; was just mechanics, muscle memory most of the time, like running or typing. He felt a little like he was on autopilot. He had enjoyed seeing Charlie when he was working with Phoenix to investigate the bomb that had blown up Murdoc's boat and the warehouse it was being stored in, and appreciated that it meant getting looped in, at least on paper. But really, other than an occasional beer with an old friend before he headed back east, that investigation was a wash, too. The meetings with Nikki were brief but disturbing. He always left them feeling like her eyes were still moving all over him.

When Matty suggested they offer that Mac would share a meal with her, sit next to her, he absolutely shut down the idea. He could talk to her, listen to her ramble on about the life they could have 'if only', but he was not, repeat not, going to share anything with her and was definitely not going to imply that proximity was desirable. He didn't call the whole thing off, simply because it was working. She was offering up names, dead drop sites, meeting places, every time she was allowed to see him. His delightful repertoire of nightmares expanded to include her stalking him, capturing him, keeping him prisoner, just so she could watch him, touch him. Four weeks couldn't come to an end fast enough.

Of course the more Nikki talked, the more she revealed about the Organization, the more worried Matty got about the contracts out on him and the ends he might be used for, above and beyond revenge on his father. Every time he turned around, it felt like she was adding another person to the team, another layer of security that kept him from both doing his job and living any kind of life. The additional personnel were valiantly trying not to get on his nerves, but he felt like he was literally tripping over people; at home, at the office, on missions. The core team, however, was doing everything they could to make life tolerable. Showing up for impromptu games of Cards Against Humanity or Texas Hold 'Em, dragging him out to the movies, or just hanging out to play video games and make the constant crush of having other people around a little more pleasant. Sissy approved of the strategy, encouraging him to just embrace where things were right now, and suggesting that maybe being a little more social might just be good for him, might help keep him out of his own head a bit and give him some material for pleasant dreams, since medication was a lost cause for him.

Bozer and Beth also offered a pleasant distraction, being caught up as they were in wedding plans and insisting that the Best Man be involved every step of the way. Beth had, for some reason Mac wasn't quite sure of, asked Mel to be her Maid of Honor and they did a fair amount of joking that their friends couldn't have picked worse people to lead the charge at getting together a big formal church wedding and ornate reception. After a long morning of covertly rolling their eyes at each other while they pretended they could taste the difference between a Tahitian vanilla sponge cake and its less expensive counterpart, they'd escaped the happy couple for a couple of hours and gone out to lunch. Jack very deliberately sat at the counter at the opposite end of shop from the booth they chose, claiming he needed some quiet to go with his coffee and pie because the whole wedding thing gave him a headache. In reality, it was a good spot to keep an eye on the whole place, and while he was keeping his promise to himself not to play matchmaker, he didn't see anything wrong with making sure there was space in Mac's otherwise chaotic life for whatever was going on between them, whether it was simple friendship or something more, to develop.

He smiled to himself a fair amount as the two of them laughed and talked, and was close to grinning when Mac had eaten an appetizer, whole meal, and then dessert like he actually wanted it and not just because he was being mindful of bad habits. When they got into Jack's car to drop her back off with Beth at the bridal shop to look at dresses, Jack concealed a smirk when Mac got into the back seat with her so they could continue their conversation about a hiking trip Mel had taken with her two brothers the summer before to celebrate her getting her nurse practitioner's license; they'd hiked all along the Appalachian Trail, a trip Mac had sort of always wanted to take, but never seemed to have the time for. Jack pulled up in front of the shop and Mac slid out of the car, onto the sidewalk, pulling the door open wide.

Mel got out and looked up at the window of the shop where Beth was waving a pair of ice blue satin heels that had to be four inches high with the uncomfortable looking addition of rhinestones all around the opening. "Ugh, guys, save me," she groaned.

Mac laughed. "I don't think you're going to get her to agree to crocs, Mel."

"You won't think it's so funny when you see what Bozer's got planned for the guys, Angus MacGyver!"

"Wait," Jack said through the open window, "what's he got planned?" He was suddenly less flattered that Boze had asked him to be a groomsman.

Mel's grin was back, along with the wrinkled nose that said she was more than a little amused. "Oh, no. I'm not telling. But I think I will tag along next weekend so I can see the look on your faces." She sighed as her phone chirped. "Better get my ass inside, before waiting for me makes her go all Bridezilla."

" _Beth_?" Mac chuckled with disbelief.

"You've never seen her when she's waiting for lab results that go through my department. She's looks all cute and quiet, but she's a fire-breathing badass when she wants to be."

"Coming to the cookout later?" he asked as she turned to go.

A quick nose wrinkle. "Of course!" And she jogged up the steps and was pulled inside by the impatient Beth as she waved at them.

Mac closed the car door finally, and went around the front to get in next to Jack. Jack signaled and pulled back out into traffic. After a couple of minutes, Mac finally said, "What?" with a slight grin.

Jack glanced at him. "What? Nothin'."

"What's with the creepy smile, Jack?"

"Creepy smile? I'm not creepy." He _humphed_ a little and Mac laughed. "I'm just happy you seem to be havin' a halfway decent day is all. I've been with you 24/7 for a while now, and you've not gotten a lot of those lately."

Mac shrugged, but he smiled, too, albeit with some reserve. "Today was … well not exactly nice because the whole big fancy wedding thing is totally lost on me … but _normal_. The stuff you do. You know?"

"Yeah, I do. Lunch seemed like it was nice though," he said carefully, side-eyeing Mac to take in his reaction.

Mac's smile relaxed into one of genuine happiness. "It was! I had no idea that Mel likes to hike. And we … Oh hey, I probably should've run this by you before I said yes to plans, because security and whatever … but we were thinking about hiking out to Santa Anita Canyon tomorrow if neither of us gets called in." He paused, but when Jack didn't say anything, he nudged, "Do you think we can swing that?"

"Huh?" Jack grinned. "Yeah, it's no problem." Mac looked like he felt bad for asking. "Look, Mac. It's not up to you to adjust your life around what's easy for a security detail. You live your life and it's our job to figure out how to let you. Okay?"

Mac gave his usual self-deprecating shrug. "Thanks, Jack. Today is the most normal things have felt in … forever it feels like. I can almost forget we have a blocker car and a tail. You know?"

Jack nodded, and then focused on driving for a few minutes since the traffic was picking up. Then he said, "I'll tell Chas to bring his hiking boots tomorrow and he can lead in. I'll take your six. And we'll stay the hell out of your way as much as we can. Hopefully you won't even know we're with you."

Mac glanced at him. There was something different about Jack's tone, about how he was behaving at the moment, but Mac couldn't put his finger on it. It didn't worry him, didn't seem like a bad thing, but he wondered what was up. Since Jack was all smiles he decided to just let it pass.

0-0-0

While Jack had come to the conclusion that there was no real 'off duty' with Mac a long time ago, hiking almost ten miles with the man, who was for a change actually having fun and not paying attention to every little thing, all while trying to be unobtrusive, took on duty to a whole new level. When the pair decided to scale the rocks at Sturtevent Falls, Jack had made himself obtrusive as hell citing everything from Mac's fear of heights to the fact that hanging off those rocks would make it awfully easy for anyone who wanted to to just pick him off from a different damned zip code. Mac had conceded, but then insisted on going up the trail in the other direction so they could take in the Falls from the top without the climb. When they got there, he gave the edge some space while still taking in and enjoying the view. Mel stepped back from where she was leaning out over the lip so she could see the rainbows the water was making on the rocks when she realized Mac had looped a hand through a strap on her pack. She turned to face him.

"You really are afraid of heights, huh?"

He nodded, much more comfortable now that she wasn't tempting gravity. "Always have been."

"But you … Why were you going to climb up with me then? You could've just said something."

"Looked like a fun climb," he shrugged. "Besides, being afraid isn't a good reason to avoid doing something worthwhile."

She met his blue eyes with her grey ones for a long moment. "I suppose that's true." Then she just elbowed him playfully, turning back to the trail. "Remember that the next time you half bleed to death before you come down and let someone stitch you up."

Mac fell into step beside her, chuckling. "I will certainly endeavor to do so." He heard Jack about ten feet behind them mumbling something about feeling like the goddamned lobster in his niece's favorite Disney movie. He called over his shoulder, "What's your problem, Jack?"

 _That's when you kiss the girl ya big dumb genius_ , Jack thought to himself. What he said out loud was, "Nothin', bud. Just gettin' worn out from gallivanting all over the freaking San Gabriels so you guys can admire some dirty water."

Mac and Mel just laughed and went back to their discussion of inconsiderate hikers who had left some trash in the canyon. By the time they made it back into the city and dropped Mel at her apartment in the Phoenix run complex that fortunately had its own built in security team and layers of tech between its occupants and the outside world, they were dirty, sweaty, and exhausted. That didn't stop them from planning another hike for the following weekend, before they said goodbye. When Mac got back in the car, he grinned at Jack. "You look beat. Want me to drive?"

"I got it. Today was a nice example of why I need to cross train," he chuckled ruefully. Knocking out a 5k every morning was one thing. Hiking ten miles over a mountain, something that even a few years ago he used to do all the time, was something else. "I need the world's longest hottest shower."

Mac laughed. "I need two of those, I'm pretty sure." As the merged into the annoyingly tight rush hour traffic, Mac asked, "Hungry?"

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Isn't Boze comin' over tonight and firing up the grill, all guys-night style?"

"Yeah, but," Mac checked his watch, "Not for an hour or so. I'm hungry now."

"Hiking must be good for the appetite." Mac continued grinning. "I'm guessin' the company didn't hurt any either."

Now there was absolutely no mistaking the implication in Jack's tone. Mac felt himself flushing, just a little. "It's not like that, Jack."

"Not like what? I didn't say anything that implied anything," he insisted. Then he glanced at Mac and gave him a double raise of his eyebrows.

"Shut up, Jackass." Mac gave a little shake of his head. "She's a good friend, Jack. That's all."

"Okay," Jack nodded, his tone entirely agreeable. "Those aren't easy to find. Especially in our line of work."

Mac had just nodded and then become somewhat thoughtful, although his introspection didn't stop him from scarfing down what was arguably a dangerous amount of In-N-Out Burger, Jack was pleased to note. They had turned onto Mac's street, and Jack waved to a couple of the security guys as they approached the house, noting as they passed Milton, the man looked distracted, concerned. Mac finally quietly admitted, "It could turn into more, I guess. Someday, maybe."

Jack dipped his head in an approving nod. "Just wanted to know that all the stuff that's been going on in your life hasn't closed you off to possibility, brother."

Mac smiled at him as they pulled into his parking area, but it was quickly wiped away when he saw Matty's car waiting there. Jack's expression mirrored his own trepidation as they got out of the car. Matty was waiting in his living room. "Hi guys," she opened in a subdued voice.

"Matty," Mac nodded, then blurted, "What's going on?"

"Why don't you sit down?" she asked gently. Mac's jaw tightened and his expression was as stubborn as Jack had ever seen it. Instead of sitting, he folded his arms. Matty took a deep breath. "The good news is that there has been something of a break in the case, relative to _Bethlehem_ at least." Mac gave a curt nod, telling her to go on. "It seems that an aide to one of the Joint Chiefs was compromised by the Organization and that was how the decision to go after the PFPA as a means of accessing the vaults was made. They thought it would preserve their access to the Pentagon at large while still getting them the bioweapon they wanted."

Mac was growing increasingly suspicious. "This seems like a Monday morning briefing piece of information, Matty. What are you doing here looking like you ran over somebody's cat?"

Matty just nodded, like she was agreeing with herself about something she hadn't said out loud. "Patricia Thornton has gone dark. And …" she swallowed hard, not liking that she had to tell him this, but not wanting to leave it to anyone else. "Your father was found unconscious in the apartment they had been sharing under what we believed were airtight false identities. He'd been shot in the chest, Mac," she concluded softly.

Mac walked slowly over to the kitchen counter and sat on one of the stools. Simply frowning for a few moments. "Is he ..?"

"Alive. But he's in critical condition, Mac. We aren't sure if he'll …"

"I … uh … Where is he?"

Matty already had out her phone and was typing as she spoke. "Walter Reed at the moment. Because of the security concerns we have, I'm sending staff to transport him to our facility and I …"

"I need to go," Mac interrupted, standing again.

Matty began, "Mac, Security …"

"Can go right along with him, Matilda," Jack said, putting a steadying hand on Mac's shoulder. He'd been afraid something like this would happen when Jim had told Mac he was going back into the field. The kid still had a lot of baggage to unpack with Jim and if the bastard died before he'd had a chance Jack thought he might just revive the man long enough for the well-deserved Dalton face punch he was still owed.

"Alright. I'll arrange it. Wheels up in … call it two hours. I'm going to get the security and medical staff together that I want with you. Take a shower. Pack a bag. I'm going to leave it up to the docs when we can actually transport. Okay?"

Mac got up and just headed quietly toward his room to get ready to go. Jack gave Matty what could only be called a glare. "What?" she snapped.

"I'm gonna go take care of whatever needs to be taken care of and get Mac back here as soon as I can. When we get back, no more keeping him in a holding pattern. He can't keep this up. And if his old man dies, it'll be even worse. You've got to let us go after the Organization, not just reacting, actively hunting them down. Starting with the dirt bags who've taken a contract on Mac."

Jack's voice was so calm, so cool, despite the unbridled anger she saw in his eyes. She'd forgotten this Jack. This was the Jack that could bring down anyone he put in his sights. Add one blond genius to the mix and Matty was pretty sure it wouldn't matter where anyone ran and hid, if that team went no holds barred against them, they'd be in a cell or the ground by winter.

She gave him a nod and an almost smile. "I can authorize that."

"Good." Jack walked away to shower and change himself, not knowing when he might have another chance to do so.


	28. Chapter 28

_A/N - Hey all. I decided to wrap this one up here. Mostly because I'm going to be sort of busy for a few weeks, but also because I'm ready for some action when I pick back up in the Mac-verse again and I kind of want that to be it's own story. This one was angstier than I planned, but I found I really liked it, and I sort of needed Mac to work through some of his remaining issues, or at least start to. Dude's pushing thirty, and I'm here to tell you that that's the decade where I think everybody finally figures out that the stuff that already happened to them doesn't have to keep writing the book of their life. That's what it did for me anyway. So here it is. The end of Soul of Goodness._

Mac shifted in the stiff recliner, mumbling softly in his thin sleep, oblivious, for a moment, to the muted beeping of the monitor next to his father's bed. Jack had finally gone to get a coffee and stretch his legs after everyone from Steve, to Todd, then Mel, and finally Matty had said this wing of Phoenix was secure, and they would look after Mac so he could take a break. Steve had tried to get Mac to go home a few times, telling him honestly that his father's condition was as stable as it was going to get and it would benefit no one, least of all the unconscious senior MacGyver, if Mac wore himself out. But Mac had looked at the charts, knew as well as any medical professional who'd tried to soften the information for him, that his father only had about a fifty-fifty chance, and if there was even a slight chance that he might wake up, Mac wasn't going to be home, to just not sleep as usual anyway, and miss it. Of course, sheer stubbornness will only keep a person going for so long, and he'd started taking short involuntary naps sometime the day before. He was making himself sick, and no one who was watching was willing to pretend that he wasn't doing it, or deny that it was in some way his own punishment for some perceived culpability in the situation.

He mumbled more audibly, and it was a sound of pure distress.

Mel slid one of the hard plastic more temporary visitors' chairs next to the recliner Steve had finally brought in for Mac when he made it clear that he wasn't going to move. She put a hand on his forearm, shaking it. "Mac … Mac … Wake up, c'mon."

He twitched and she shook him gently again. He startled awake, sucking in his breath and automatically scrubbing both hands over his face. "I … Was I bothering you?" he asked blinking and looking like it was a surprise that he was in this small room at Phoenix Medical with his one surviving family member unconscious in front of him.

"No, Mac, you weren't bothering anyone, but you were starting to dream. It didn't sound so good," she said quietly. He nodded, acknowledging that perhaps his dreams had been disturbing, but not saying anything more. "You've been here for days. You've barely eaten. You haven't really slept …" She trailed off for a minute and took in the stubborn drawn together eyebrows and hard set of his mouth before she gave him an understanding smile. "You're going to just collapse. And then I won't be your friend, I'll be your nurse. We both know how much you love that."

He shook his head, raking a hand through his hair again. "I can't leave. Not now. I'll be alright."

"No," she shook her head. "You won't be. I was walking by a while ago when you got up to go get some more coffee and I thought you were going down for the count then." It wasn't a challenge, rather the same quiet understanding Jack had been offering him. He looked like he wanted to argue with her but she just got up and pushed back the curtain on the other side of his father's bed, revealing a small cot with several soft blue blankets and his pillow all obviously from home. "You can't nap in this chair forever. Bozer went to your place and got some bedding. Steve got a cot out of his garage, because all of us know we could wheel every bed in the place in here but the only way you'll actually sleep in a hospital bed is drugged to the gills." He actually snickered a little at that. Then he eyed the hard little camping cot longingly and yawned. "Before you lie down, I'm going to go get you some food. Real food. Not cafeteria garbage. And you're going to eat it." She gave him her full-on I'm-the-boss-of-you look that was all too familiar.

"I'm not hungry," he mumbled.

"Which would matter if I'd asked. After you eat …" She paused waiting for him to protest again, but he didn't. "Then you are taking the pills Steve left for you last night that you insisted you didn't need, climbing in that bed, and getting some real freaking sleep not just nightmare clouded naps."

"I'm fine," he argued, though he knew he wasn't really being honest with himself.

She shook her head. "You might think you're the most stubborn person you know. But unfortunately for you, my shift isn't over for another three hours, and when shift changes, Steve is coming on. And we will out-stubborn you all day if that's what it takes to keep from having too MacGyvers admitted here. So, do you want burgers, tacos, a sandwich, or some soup?"

He almost smiled at the implication that him not being hungry was entirely off the table. "I guess I could eat soup."

She gave him an approving nod. "I'll be back in a little bit." She rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. "No matter what happens, you … This isn't your fault. You know that."

"Yeah," he sighed without any real conviction.

"And you need to take care of you, okay?"

He nodded with a little more feeling and she gave a small smile. She walked out of the room, nodding at Jack as he returned. When she brought back a takeout bag a little later, she first handed Jack the pastrami on rye and a ginger ale that he hadn't known he wanted, then she gave Mac a vegetable beef barley soup, some crackers, and a sparkling water along with two tablets in a small paper cup. She didn't say anything other than 'you're welcome' to his 'thank you', so he was more inclined to just take the pills and eat the food than if she'd pestered him more. She just patted him on the shoulder and looked pointedly between him and the cot before tipping him a smile and leaving to finish her shift.

Mac downed the pills with a swallow of water and then, with a look of grim determination, ate all of the soup and crackers. "What was that all about?" Jack finally asked, finishing his sandwich and shifting uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair he was currently occupying.

"Steve left me something to help me sleep last night and I never ... Stuff never works great anyway and I didn't want to be too out of it if anything … you know … So I've been avoiding sleeping if I could help it. And …"

"And avoiding eating, and going home for five minutes, and anything else that resembles putting yourself in a priority spot. I believe I've mentioned that a time or two myself."

Mac sighed. "I know you guys are just trying to help so I …" he trailed off.

"Good." Jack nodded, giving Mac and the cot a hard stare of his own.

Mac actually smiled, got up, and went into the bathroom. Someone had left a toothbrush and toothpaste for him there as well. He came back, took off his shoes, and climbed under the blankets, thinking that camping cot or not, it was a damned sight better than the vinyl chair he'd been crashing in for the last … _how many days?_ He was asleep before he'd figured it out. Jack gratefully moved to the crappy hospital recliner, between Mac and the door. He noticed some irregular blips on the heart monitor as he dozed off. This week was not looking up for his partner.

0-0-0

In spite of crashing several times and being in a state of induced unconsciousness for over two weeks, during which Mac never really left the hospital, Jim managed to pull through. Over a month of rehab later and he was finally released from constant in-patient care. He was not able to tell them who had shot him or why Patricia had disappeared. He didn't remember much of anything, so he was very little help with their investigation. It also didn't look like he was going to be able to go back to work after this, not at Phoenix or in the intelligence business anyway. He did go back to the _Land's End_ with a full-time nurse that Matty arranged for because she told Mac she needed him at the office to start really figuring out what had happened in DC, but in reality she thought if he just kept up whatever guilt-fueled trip he was on waiting on his father hand and foot he was going to have a physical or mental breakdown of his own.

Despite anyone's best efforts to distract Mac from trying to do everything for his father, he still spent a fair amount of time there. But no matter what either of them said or did, they didn't touch on why there was a constant thundercloud of tension that hung over them. It was almost Halloween when the storm finally broke. Jim called to tell Mac that since he could no longer actively work in his true chosen field, and he was not ready for retirement although he was financially able to consider it, he had decided to go back to work as a chemical engineer. Mac's initial reaction had been that it was great. _Retirement is bad for people anyway_ , he reasoned. Then Jim revealed that his plan was to move back to Maine, where he was originally from, permanently, to work. Los Angeles was too crowded, made him uncomfortable. He didn't say it explicitly, but the implication certainly seemed to be (to Mac anyway) that Mac was the one crowding him. He also said he didn't want Mac unable to do his job simply because that mission had gone bad, in which Mac read that Jim thought he was avoiding field work and using his father's injury as an excuse. Jack had seen it plainly on Mac's face as he talked to his father on the phone and found himself clenching and unclenching his fists.

"When will you be … leaving?" Mac wasn't looking at Jack, and it seemed very deliberate. "Really?" Another pause while Jim answered. "Should I come see you off?" was asked as though the young man thought he'd be told not to. "Okay. Sure. Lunch would be great. See you then."

He ended the call and felt Jack's eyes on him.

"I … um … I'm going to the marina tomorrow at noon."

Jack had schooled his expression to be one of supportive empathy, and covered his seething anger beneath it. "I'll let the detail know, Mac." He paused. "He didn't give you much warning, huh?"

Mac sighed and shrugged. "I guess I'm not surprised … Before he left for DC …" Mac trailed off looking at the floor. After a long minute he went on. "I said some stuff. Some pretty nasty stuff … And I … I don't think I was really being fair … And I don't want …"

"I didn't get to hear all of it, brother, but I did hear you tell the man that you loved him anyway." Mac nodded, glancing at Jack who got to his feet and defaulted to pulling his partner into a hug. "And you showed him that was true by helping him while he got better. You have nothin' to feel bad about. Okay?"

"He didn't want my help," Mac said dully. "I think he's leaving because …" Mac's voice caught then and he finally leaned into Jack actually accepting and returning the embrace.

"He's leaving because he's a selfish asshole, not because you're not a good son, okay?" Mac didn't respond. "He never left because of you, and he didn't come back because of you. He's a self-serving prick to the core, and he just has moments where he can fake being someone who deserves to be in your life."

Jack stepped back and took Mac by the shoulders, sort of forcing eye contact so his partner could see his sincerity. "You're a good man, Mac. And I bet you were a great kid. Hell, I know you were 'cause you still were one when I met ya." Mac smiled a little at that, but Jack could see tears were close and it was only stubbornness that kept them from falling. "You got plenty of family right here who knows it, too. So the hell with him. You go, say your goodbyes. Send him a Christmas card or whatever when the mood strikes you. He's got nothing to do with who you are, Mac." Jack paused. "I'm sorry I ever bugged you about getting in touch with him. I thought it would help you and all it's done is hurt and that's the last thing …"

It was Mac's turn to pull his partner into a hug at the catch in his voice. "You've only ever helped me, Jack. And you've never been fake, never lied to me. Don't. Don't question yourself." Jack hugged him back for a minute then stepped away to say something more, but Mac stopped him. "I'm gonna go grab a shower and then crash."

He was no longer looking at Jack and the tautness of his voice let Jack know what the kid really wanted was time alone, so he didn't mention dinner uneaten on the table or the fact that it was only seven o'clock. He just nodded, and said, "I'll clean up the kitchen and talk with the detail about the marina for tomorrow. Night, bud."

Mac didn't say anything else, just headed straight for his room and closed the door.

0-0-0

Jack was on the deck of the _Land's End_ waiting for the three o'clock departure Jim had planned, trying to give Mac some privacy when the shouting began. Jack had almost expected it, but a small part of him was surprised that Mac raised his voice, that Mac let the man see just how deeply hurt he was. Jack didn't know what had been said in the office before the shooting in DC but he heard all of it this time. He swallowed hard and stepped off the boat and onto the dock in an effort to give the men some semblance of privacy while still doing his job as Mac's personal security. After a while the volume died down and quiet conversation could be heard indistinctly through the screened windows. Mac came out looking calm and composed. "Let's go, Jack."

"You're not going to stay until ..?"

"No," Mac shook his head. "I'm finished here."

They got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot in silence. Jack glanced at him frequently, but Mac was quietly fidgeting with a paper clip, bending into some shape Jack couldn't quite make out. Mac noticed that they were on Wilshire Boulevard. Jack had made a turn without even realizing he did it. "Hey Jack?"

"Yeah," the older man said absently.

"Do you wanna go talk to _your_ dad?"

Jack looked around, just realizing the route he'd chosen for them. He chuckled to himself. "I guess I must."

"That's okay," Mac offered quietly. "I kind of feel like taking a walk outside anyway. I don't mind." He texted Todd about the detour.

Jack made the turn to the National Cemetery, with a sideways glance at Mac, finally making out that what he'd bent the paperclip into was a pair of scissors. The rest of the security detail pulled into the lot behind them and Milton got out of the car to accompany Mac on his walk. Mac gave him a wave that let him know to keep his distance, that he needed some space. They all felt a little badly about how easily Mac had adjusted to being guarded like the president, or probably more accurately like some billionaire's kid, with no say in what that really looked like. Jack cast one more glance at Mac before he turned and made his way through the familiar route to have a chat with good old Jack Senior.

0-0-0

"And if I'd known he felt that way, Pop, I swear I woulda figured out how to get him outta there sooner, figured out how to get him back to school. I never would let DXS pull him in …"

He stopped as the blond sat down next to him. He wondered for a brief almost panicked moment how much Mac had heard of his now tearful conversation, albeit a one sided one, with his father. Mac just put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey Jack."

"Hey buddy. How was your walk?"

"Good. Got my head around a few things I think."

Jack absently ran a hand over his face, removing the evidence of his emotional talk. "Good to hear," he said quietly. Then he gave Mac a slight grin to distract him from anything he might have overheard. "Aren't you gonna say hello?"

Mac chuckled. "Hey, Mr. Dalton." Mac paused for a minute, wondering if he should do what he was thinking and then deciding it was kind of the perfect way to say what needed saying. "I don't know what kind of nonsense Jack Jr. has been filling you with today, sir, but you should probably give him a good talking to. He keeps trying to blame himself for things that have happened to me, sir. He always does it. Every time I get hurt, or someone says something awful, or I do something dumb, he acts like it's his fault." Mac stopped and put an arm around Jack's shoulders. "He thinks that he could've fixed every little regret I have if he'd done something different." Jack glanced at him, but now Mac was looking doggedly at that headstone, knowing if he made eye contact with Jack he'd probably cry. And frankly he'd had enough of that to last him a lifetime right now. "Thing is, sir, I need you to make him understand that even though I have regrets, most of them aren't regrets about where my life has gone, just that it took me until I was twenty years old to meet a man who was worth half a damn as a father. And then he went and made up for it by also being one hell of a best friend, big brother, partner, and general pain in the ass, too."

"Aw, hell, Mac," Jack said, running his hand over his face again.

"So you should tell him, sir, that he doesn't need to worry about that stuff anymore. And he doesn't need to worry about today. I finally said what I needed to say and even though I don't think the man really listened, it's going to have to be good enough. Because I've already got everything I need right here in LA."

Neither one of them ever talked about that conversation later, nor of the half hour they sat on the ground weeping together for the things they had lost, and probably even more for the ones they had found since meeting in Afghanistan all those years ago, but neither one of them ever forgot it. After a while they were just sitting quietly in the sun. Finally Jack said, "Pop agrees with you. He also says that you make a pretty passable grandson." Mac chuckled. "He also says he doesn't want you to do this job forever because you know you don't want to. He expects you to fall in love with some nice girl, get yourself married, but maybe not a big stupid wedding like Bozer is driving us all crazy with, and then he expects a whole passel of great-grandbabies. Like at least three."

Mac actually blushed a little and grinned. "I'll see what I can do."

Jack grinned at him and started getting up. "You hungry?"

Mac nodded. "I was thinking of seeing if everybody wanted to come over and grill out. I don't want to just sit around in my own head tonight."

Jack gave an approving nod. "And maybe get a little head start on Pop Dalton's prescription for long and prosperous living with a certain nice girl we know."

Mac shook his head. "You and Pop Dalton need to mind your own business. I told you, Jack, we're just friends."

"Alright, alright. I believe you." Jack gave Mac a wink then turned back to the stone. "Talk to you soon, Pop."

Mac was leaning on a nearby marker and it seemed to him like this was as good a time to ask as any about something that had always bothered him. "Jack?"

"Yeah, bud?"

"Why does your father's grave stone say 2007?"

Jack tipped a sad little smile. "That's the date he wanted on there."

"Wanted? But, he was still alive when we met, Jack. He died right after Belarus, you've told me that. Not too long before you offered me a job the first time."

Jack looked at the blindingly green grass for a moment before looking back at Mac to answer. This was uncomfortably close to the conversation they'd had a little while ago. "That date on the stone was the day he left home in Texas and came out here."

"Your parents weren't divorced, were they?"

"No, sir, but he didn't want the family to watch him die and he didn't think he had very long. Things just stretched out longer than he or his doctors thought. That date right there, is when I stopped speaking to him. Because walking away from my mom … that was one of the most selfish things I'd ever heard of."

"Wanting to spare people you love seeing you suffer is selfish?"

"No. But wanting to leave because you're afraid that seeing you sick will diminish you in their eyes is. Being afraid to face needing someone, of telling them you need them … That's selfish." Mac was nodding, finally really understanding why Jack took Jim's behavior so personally. It wasn't just how he felt about Mac, but that he'd seen a father make a selfish decision that hurt people he loved before and he'd seen the man almost die alone because of it. "Oh, man was my mom pissed when she came out for the funeral and saw that stone. I was all trussed up in a sling, and walking with a crutch and more stitches than you could count and I thought she was gonna beat me within an inch of my life, till the chaplain explained that it was Pop who had it done." Mac smiled slightly. "He explained that it was the one day, the one thing, Jack Dalton ever really regretted. That leaving your family and not showing them that you loved them until your last breath was the only thing a man ever needed to regret, and that since he wasn't gonna …" Jack's voice caught and Mac stepped closer, putting an arm around him again. "Since he wasn't gonna be around to remember that, he was gonna leave something so the rest of the world would."

Mac sniffed a little himself. "That's kind of beautiful, actually."

Jack shook his head, smiling faintly again. "Also, Pop had a weird sense of humor. I think he maybe thought it was a little funny, too."

Mac kept his comment about apples not falling far from trees to himself.

Jack's smile got a little bigger. "Every time Ma visits me she comes out here and cusses him out about it somethin' awful. She says he was an old scoundrel."

Mac looked sad again. "I have to think he was a good man, Jack. Look at you."

Jack's face fell just a little. "He was, for the most part … But … Somebody doesn't need a good dad to be a good man … Look at you."

Mac really felt he might cry again and he was having none of it, so he did what he always did when things were going to an emotional place he had difficulty with. He retreated for a moment into his near perfect memory and brought up a little shred of something that both let him put it between himself and those feeling and leant some meaning to the occasion.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out. For our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers, Which is both healthful and good husbandry. Besides, they are our outward consciences And preachers to us all, admonishing That we should dress us fairly for our end. Thus may we gather honey from the weed And make a moral of the devil himself."

Jack thought for a moment and then just patted him on the shoulder and started walking back toward the car, waving to Milton who had kept his distance for privacy's sake but stayed close enough to do the job. " _Henry the Fifth_ , huh?" Mac nodded. "I must be wearing off on ya a little."

Mac took a few quick steps to catch up. "I read it when I was laid up after all that shit in Kandahar. Wash gave it to me when I ran out of magazines."

"Every soldier should read that play." Jack sounded like he really meant it.

"That's what Wash said," he agreed as he climbed into the car and got out his phone to start texting friends to see if they were free for dinner.

"Ever seen the movie?" Jack asked, and Mac shook his head. "I have it. We should put it up on the big screen on the deck tonight so everybody can watch it." He paused and gave Mac a mischievous grin. "Chicks dig a guy who can quote Shakespeare."

Mac just shook his head. "What am I going to do with you, Jack?"

"You can't get rid of me now. Because what'd the Bard say about brothers, man?"

Mac actually smiled, just as several affirmative replies came in response to his group text. "He who sheds his blood with me shall be … a one of those."

"Damn straight."

For the first time in a long time, Mac felt like that was enough. He felt like _he_ was enough. And he thought maybe he liked the direction his life was headed in. If the previous weeks and months had convinced him of anything it was that he was going to bring down the Organization so he could have the life he chose without constant fear of threats and reprisals, whether that life included Phoenix … or something else. He glanced at Jack as they weaved through LA rush hour traffic at a speed and with skill only someone with Jack Dalton's level of training could manage and mumbled softly, "We happy few."

 ** _The End_**

 _Coming soon (as in when I have some time) Once More into the Breach, where Mac and his ops team will go after the contractors who are trying to come after him in an effort to discover who's pulling the strings in the Organization and why they want him so badly._


End file.
